4 posts tagged “vancouver”
Wow the weeks are passing quickly and I've been a bit lax in posting about Vancouver like I said I would. This time, I'd like to write about Uncle Patrick, whose family I stayed with when I was up there.
First of all, Uncle Patrick is an amazing photographer (his many trophies testify to that). I couldn't believe just how many amazing photos he had packed away, particularly of wildlife. For example, he gave me a stunning photo of two bald eagles sitting on a tree branch, with snow-covered moutain tops in the background. Just amazing. And he's dedicated to getting his pictures perfect. For example, those photos of me standing next to a snowman with a Santa hat? That was Uncle Patrick's handy work -- he built the snowman so he could get the perfect picture for this year's Christmas cards. Now that's dedication.
Anyway, back to the story. Technically, "Uncle Patrick" is not my uncle -- it's just a generic term we use for an older male relative, although I guess this convention isn't restricted to Chinese culture. Probably what is Chinese-specific is that there are different terms for an "uncle" who is older or younger than your father. Uncle Patrick is in actual fact my father's father's brother's son, i.e. my father's cousin. My grandfather was the no. 1 (eldest) son. Uncle Patrick's father was the no. 5 son (afaik). Uncle Patrick is younger than my father, therefore I call him "Cheng Sook", the "Cheng" part being his first name.
Let me digress for a moment on the structure of Chinese names. They are opposite to western names: you start with the surname, then you have your middle name and finally your first name. For example, my Chinese name is Siu Gee Yeung. When I quote my full name in official documents, it gets transposed into Alec Gee-Yeung Siu. So my Uncle Patrick's first name is "Cheng", and his middle name is "Wing". The great thing about that is that he shares his middle name with my dad -- in fact that entire "generation" of cousins will have their surname and middle name in common. Likewise, I share my middle name, "Gee", with my brother and my cousins, and Uncle Patrick's sons (which is the cool part). I think it's such a great way of indicating the deep respect we have for family ties, that Vincent and Roger, who I had never met before coming to Canada, who were about the same age as myself and my brother, would share the same middle name as me. Talk about coordination -- I mean, who gets to pick what the middle name should be? First in, first served? I wonder how many other "Siu Gee"s are out there?
I didn't actually stay very long in Vancouver. I only had one full day there, but by the end of it, I felt as welcome as a son and I never felt like I was imposing, even though our blood ties were pretty thin. Roger and I still couldn't figure out what the relationship between us is technically called (thankfully Wikipedia has the answer: we're second cousins). What other things did I get up to (besides eating at Chinese restaurants? Oh and a really good Japanese ramen joint called Kintaro's); hmmm:
- I checked out Granville Island (which seemed like a mix of Sydney's Darling Harbour and South Melbourne markets);
- I saw bits of UBC (wow -- they have an Asian culture studies centre, with Japanese architectural features); and
- I went out drinking at a pub with some of Roger's friends, where I had a Kilkenny's (at last a beer served right) and was introduced to the Sake Bomb, which I will have to try again someday :).
I'm looking forward to my next trip -- it definitely feels like I've only scratched the surface, I could easily imagine living there... no wonder Vancouver and Melbourne both top the livability surveys year after year, they're both my kind of cities!
Well it's been more than a week, so I should probably get off my backside and write about my Vancouver trip before it's just a distant memory. If there's one thing Chinese the world over seem to appreciate, it's good food. And we're probably a bit prejudiced towards the cuisine of our own culture -- to me, there's nothing like nice, juicy, plump dumplings (though not quite like the ones featured in this film by Fruit Chan I saw at the Melbourne International Film Festival...).
Seattle Chinese food tends to be of the Americanized kind; generally lacking in flavour, the menu is a time warp to the faux-Asian classics that Chinese would never dream of ordering when going out to a restaurant (viz. sweet and sour pork, chicken chow mein, lemon chicken and the like).
My relatives in Vancouver assured me I would like the food in Vancouver. There are simply too many Chinese there to put up with mediocre fare. And you know what? It was pretty darn good! Even compared to Melbourne and Sydney, which I contend are possibly unequalled for being able to produce such a variety of "ethnic" foods and in such quality and varied price points.
I went to Kirin Restaurant twice in the space of a day, first for yum cha in the day time in Cambie, second for dinner in downtown. Both were great, but I'll talk about the first occasion because of two things:
- Canada seems to follow the American convention of calling the daytime dumpling fest "dim sum" rather than "yum cha". Personally I think this is kinda weird for a couple of reasons, (a) because my family has never referred to this kind of meal as anything other than "yum cha", and (b) being an Aussie, I associate "dim sum" with parcels of unidentifiable meat/vegetable matter that comes frozen in a bag and prepared in a deep-fryer for consumption.
- The dumplings and other dishes weren't wheeled around on trolleys for inspection; rather you had to order a la carte and presumably your dishes were prepared fresh just for you. While I kind of missed the visual ritual of inspecting the different offerings, I did appreciate the fact we could hold a conversation without shouting, and the service overall was excellent.
The other funny thing about my yum cha outing was the number of people my relatives seemed to bump into or say hello to at the restaurant. It was great to be able to feel a part of this close-knit circle in sharing this table with people I had met barely 24 hours ago, but who still welcomed me like close family (even though our blood ties are pretty distant). More on that in my next post...
Wow. The snow kept on falling today, and while it had stopped by the time I left the office (just after 7.30pm), its effects were still being felt. It took me 40 minutes to get to the gym thanks to a jam that resembled bad peak hour traffic, a trip that typically takes me 5 minutes on a normal day. By the time I finished my workout, the situation had cleared but on the way to the supermarket to pick up some milk and cereal I saw car after car abandoned by the side of the road on Redmond Way... I'm not sure what their owners were thinking, since I was able to drive about just fine (albeit carefully). Perhaps they were just freaked out by the notion of driving through snow, something that mustn't happen here very often (or quite to this degree). Yes, it's late November so it's approaching winter, but by my calculations Seattle has used up its customary two days of snow for the year. A harbinger of climate change or just some freaky one-off?
Update: I've uploaded some photos of the snow freakiness onto Picasa Web; here's one of them below. Check out more on my Snow album on Google. Also some news reports on the snow fall in Seattle (more tipped for Wednesday!) and Vancouver.
I have officially cured my phobia of driving in the rain -- the possibility of losing traction in the wet is nothing compared to the reality of almost complete lack of traction in the snow. I will post about my trip to Vancouver over the Thanksgiving weekend, but first I want to talk about the harrowing 7-hour drive back from Vancouver to Seattle while I'm still on an adrenalin high!
So today's Sunday, and it actually started to snow on Saturday night (around 4pm, which is not really night but it certainly felt like it). My Uncle Patrick tells me it snows once, maybe twice in Vancouver each year, so I was lucky to witness it. It was a bitch to drive in though, with the snow having piled up overnight (and actually hadn't stopped falling by the time I left the city).
For some reason, the path out of Vancouver on the I-99 was rutted and bumpy, but somehow I made it to the border. The basic technique is to follow the tracks made by the car in front of you -- the worst thing you can do is to try and forge your own path through the snow, a sure way to slip and slide and get bogged. I was driving at half or less of the posted speed limit, so my overall average speed for this trip dropped like a stone to roughly 14mph (according to my GPS unit, more on which later). Adding to my frustration was a 2-hour queue to get through border control (you know the queue is long when you crawl past speed limit signs that mock you with "80km/h" peeking out from underneath a layer of snow). I guess I got the double whammy -- delays from the snow and all the American residents (like me) going back on the last Sunday of Thanksgiving. It was during that crawl time that I spun my wheels the most; the tyres just didn't want to grip and the traction control warning light lit up frequently. It was also when my bladder decided to make itself known a few times; my solution (to put it somewhat delicately) involved an empty coffee cup and I shall say no more than that :).
I stopped for gas not long after getting back onto American soil, and it was a scene of chaos. Some people were resigned to not being able to move for the night, their cars stuck in deep snow. Others were desperately fitting snow chains to their tyres. The prospect of my having to sleep the night in my car waiting for the snow to clear loomed very large indeed, especially since at that gas station I witnessed even big 4WDs spinning their wheels and getting nowhere. Up to that point, I wished I had one of those SUVs that I despise under normal circumstances, but when a Jeep Cherokee gets stuck, what use is a little Honda CRV or Toyota RAV4 going to be?
Actually, once I got back onto the freeway, the snow seemed to have thinned a bit, to the point where I was making some good time and speed (30mph, which felt fast compared to the crawl I was going at before in Canada). A mind numbing 3 hours later, I was back in Seattle, where it had clearly been snowing but where weather conditions had reverted to an insistent but manageable drizzle. At least the roads were relatively clear, something I can't say for the I-5 leading back to Canada, which in stretches was simply choc-a-block with cars -- oh how I pitied those poor Canucks heading home undoubtedly after some Black Friday largesse...
I am so thankful to Volkswagen now for designing a car that managed to get me home in one piece. I made full use of the anti-lock brakes ("what's that pulsing I can feel in the brake pedal?"), the traction control ("dammit my wheels are spinning, my tail is swerving and the car is moving backwards!") and the stability control ("was that my tail going out again?"). What made me even more grateful was seeing all the cars ploughed headfirst into snow drifts by the side of the highway. Obviously some people either didn't have these electronic lifesavers, or drove so foolishly as to nullify their effects -- for example, I recall seeing a Mazda RX-8, an Infiniti G35 coupe and a Lexus IS all either stuck by the side of the road or the driver desperately trying to achieve takeoff by flooring the gas pedal!
During this trip, I also discovered the fallibility of GPS systems -- my Garmin nuvi 350 is pretty easy to use, and it will certainly get you to your destination, but half the time it won't take you via the route the locals will take you. Whoever can figure out how to add this local knowledge into their routing algorithms will be set for life. On the other hand, I wouldn't leave for a strange place without it -- there's something very reassuring about always knowing where you are and in which direction you're heading, even if (or perhaps especially when) it's the wrong one!
And finally: it's GOOD TO BE HOME!!! (Photos to come...)
