A long time

Oh well, it seems like my blog updates are loosing momentum. Not that I'm too busy, but because I'm too lazy. Sidetrack... a while ago, I received an email newsletter with a very interesting topic on "What If You Wrote A Blog Post, And No One Read It?". That set me pondering over what I write and who wants to read them. Right now, I'm just rattling for fun and just to keep some memories of my time in Canada. So I do hope you enjoy catching up on what I'm doing and the little techie stuff that I put up just to remind myself of little tweaks and solutions.

So what's been going on for me over these past few days? To kick off, SF made a nice orange cake for me to cut on 20th November.


She's cute in every way.


And skilled in culinary arts (she made dao sa piah that was delicious).


On Sunday morning, it was strangely warm enough for SF to say, "Let's go out for a walk!" And so we did. Along the way, we snap a few photos including the woods that's just around the corner. We also took photos of this humongous detached house just up the slope where we live. If you're interested, it's on sale (at the time when the picture was taken)!

And oh, I must say this... it snowed, yesterday! Okay, I'm getting excited over nothing. But seriously, I wonder how I'm going to cope walking the steep slopes covered in snow. It's a matter of time before I find out. This morning, whilst on the West Coast Express (that's how I get to work), I noticed the mountains on the north-side of Vancouver was now covered in snow. It must have been a harsh winter night.


SF took a video of the snowfall, so if you're keen to watch it, please drop me an email/comment. I have it on YouTube.

Visual Studio Express 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 now ready for download

I have been anxiously waiting for it's release since the announcement this month. I'm glad the wait is over, and Visual Studio Express 2008 was made available way ahead of schedule.

Download now:
1. Visual Studio Express 2008
2. .NET Framework 3.5 (Final)

All I need now is for my web-hosting provider Easy CGI to provide the necessary framework support. Yay!

Taxiway lights

So besides making tables and cupboards, we bought for the house, a set of 10 solar-powered landscape lights to brighten the driveways and walkways.


Nice ya?

Anyway, after beautifying the house, we decided to treat ourselves to a nice evening BBQ. The resident Bak Gua (肉干) chef:

We froze our butts off trying to BBQ at near zero degrees. But we couldn't help but fully utilise the fine sunny weather we had today! See how delicious our pork patties turned out?

Mmm...

It's been a week...

Since I last posted... and a month since I arrived in Canada. Not that I was busy, but really because I was lazy. I had quite a lot happening this week, but didn't have the energy to write my blog. Work, commuting, constructing furnitures, cleaning up dishes and reading up on Drupal... quite a bit of energy sucked out this short work week.


Over the long holiday last weekend, we went for another two Geocaches in Coquitlam. We found both caches successfully but couldn't sign the second as it was soaked (see inset).

And... on Thursday, we had a birthday celebration! We had DQ's Reese cake, and it was... EXCELLENT!


No prizes for guessing who the Birthday kid was!

And, this being a very distorted society, Man must have the strength to slaughter cows and ICE CREAM cakes. So who's the garang hero to part the cake? ME! Notice how the fun became real effort. Next time I need to use an ice pick.

An eventful Saturday... finally!

Given an extra holiday this weekend, we decided to make a fresh trip to Brackendale [map]. We had hoped for a better chance at catching the bald eagles feeding and taking shelter at the Eagle Run. But one of the locals told me that their numbers peaked to about 300 only in December. And that's when we plan to make a second attempt this year. So here's a little photolog of our short day trip.

Photo (1): SF gets trapped by Cocoa at a camping site in Garibaldi Provincial Park.

Photos (2 & 3): Seagulls in flight. They were hunting for salmons swimming in the cold rushing waters below.

Photo (4): And this is my well-rewarded picture after countless attempt at snipping photos of a bald eagle perched on a tree across the stream.

Photo (5 & 6): We made a stop to view Shannon Falls.

Photo (7): We made a planned stop at Porteau Cove [map] - a divers' haunt as there is a ship wrecked for their leisure. But we were here to hunt terrestrial treasures. This would be my first Geocache find upon returning to Canada this year. More to come I hope!

Photo (8): I made the find, hooray! But the cache was very well-sealed.

Photo (9): And as usual, you can see the "gian" look!

Photo(10): The last picture I would like to share was taken at a uptown district pier in North Vancouver. It's entitled "Going Home".

Getting JBoss Seam to redirect SSL requests for development environments

1. Add the navigation namespace and schema location to components.xml.
   
2. Add the tag to configure HTTP and HTTPS ports.

• Example: <navigation:pages port="8080" port="8443">

There, I finally found the time (and courage) to take a photo of our feeble Halloween decorations. What I couldn't include was the hideous laughter that we played to scare the kiddos.


We got a treat for Sunday morning.


I finally got to taste what Krispy Kreme is all about (after hearing so many people talk about it). We ate it cold at first, but soon discovered the side of the box said, "Microwave for 8 seconds." Damn! It tastes so ordinary cold, but when warmed just a little it was heavenly. But KK is just a little too far for us to buy a box. So we just might try it with Tim Hortons' doughnuts instead.

On Saturday, we met up with some relatives to eat at downtown Vancouver. It was a perfect opportunity to bring SF out and at the same time, utilize my 28-Day WCE pass. We ate at the famous (okay, I'm assuming) Prima Taste restaurant.



We had a nice plate of satay (really succulent meat) and a big glass of Chendol, although I regretted not getting the Sago Gula Melaka instead.

Well if you are visiting Vancouver soon. You might want to just give it a try. It isn't too bad, but I think nothing beats the real thing. But just try lah, for the experience. ;)
[Google Map Link]

What else... oh, I met up with the NUS Alumni champion in BC. Nice man! Which reminds me, I was planning to write to him... okay, good night then.

Today's prayer: Lord make me an incense.

Halloween

And as my SIL pointed out... time flies. It's been a year since my first Halloween. This year, we put in more effort to decorate the doorway. Plus! We set up a speaker to blast an evil laughter each time the kiddos came to knock on our door (insert e[v]il.bunny laughter).

That's SF trying to smoke a hunchback kid. No sweets! Trick can?

Too lazy to write today, so I'll leave you with a picture of a cold foggy morning.

Back to more RDF...