THING(S) I ACCOMPLISHED TODAY: got a ride home in Preston Manning's car.
the restaurant review continues...
the office took me and my officemate out to lunch today at Azia Restaurant. it's a trendy Chinese restaurant. no, that is not an oxymoron. but i do find that there seems to be an inverse correlation between the hip interior decoration of a Chinese restaurant and the authentic quality of their food. i don't know why. for example, there were square plates, but no congee on the menu. given my weakness for tofu, i ordered the Ma Po tofu...it was okay. not bad, but not remarkable. everyone else's dishes looked good, but i didn't taste it. i was still happy with the food though, mainly because i was unbelievably famished. i'll have to give it another try another day.
after work, my coworkers went for dinner at 6 Acres restaurant, located in Gastown, this really bizarre area of downtown that straddles the tourist district and East Hastings, so you have a lot of pandhandlers hitting you up for change along the cobblestones and "historical" buildings. "historical" as in Gastown is the oldest part of vancouver, OVER A HUNDRED YEARS OLD. i tried to tell them about how parts of Quebec City are four hundred years old, and in Greece, BC means "before christ" and not "british columbia", but they would have none of it. vancouver folks have a warped sense of time and are in denial about the fact that they pretty much have the youngest city on the continent. Douglas Coupland writes a lot about how the city is fresh and vibrant because it pretty much has no history, but that comes from a middle class white man who didn't, you know, build a railroad with his bare hands or get his land taken away from him by paleskin folks who claimed their civilization was better...
the food was pretty good though. i ate a delicious meal of brie, biscuits, nuts and pear (those all go very well together, for your information). i tried both BC wine (Mission Hill Pinot Grigio) and beer (Phillips IPA). didn't really like either, but then i have not really been a fan of alcohol lately. i was told this place was really good for cheap beer and food. maybe people's standards are different, but i definitely saw beers that cost $10, so i'm not sure where everyone else has been drinking.
so yes, now i need to find a good pilates place to work off all the stuff i've been eating in this damn delicious city.
