We're back home now, minus some luggage that seems to have taken itself on a trip somewhere else by itself ... overall, I know I'm glad to be back home where it's warm and I don't have to go about wearing layers upon layers of clothing, which is what you do if you don't like being cold as much as I don't like being cold... although I actually like my winter wardrobe of clothes better than my summer stuff... But then again in Melbourne, such distinctions are probably not quite satisfactory anyways... Have a wrap-up ...

23 December 2003

The parentals and the Stirfry Ninja arrived in the afternoon, sans luggage. Their flight from Melbourne to LA got delayed, and while they made the connecting flight to Vancouver, their luggage didn't... after taking a look at their shiny new 5.0 megapixel digital camera, we got organised and figured out what was happening with dinner and stuff...

Dinner was with Zany Uncle P and Aunty B (Dad's younger sister), and their kid J (Mum was trying to kidnap the poor boy all night ... it was highly amusing), Grandma and Grandpa, Mum, Dad, Stirfry, and us. It was at the same restaurant that they all went to for Grandpa's 90th birthday celebrations held in April. We had ... what Decay could only describe as 'sliced rude thing' (that was made into a soup, and laid out over some green stuff), a couple of dishes made from the one Alaskan crab, another crab dish made from Dungeness crab, some deboned duck, probably some other stuff, and sweet soup (that wasn't red bean soup) to finish... there was a lot of food to get through ...

It was a bit of a mixture of languages around the table since Grandma and Grandpa don't speak English, Uncle P doesn't speak all that much Cantonese, and Decay didn't understand much of any dialect of Chinese being thrown about, unless it related to green things ...

24 December 2003

After doing the wake up and get out of bed and attempt to hire a car thing (we got a Pontiac Sunfire this time... BRIGHT red, can't miss the thing), Decay and I took the Stirfry out to Vancouver Aquarium, which is situated in Stanley Park. Walking from the carpark to the Aquarium building, we saw a squirrel sitting in the grass, doing ... squirrelly things? In any case, it ran off before either Stirfry or Decay got their cameras ready enough to take a happy snap ... I think Stirfry got a pic of the the squirrel's tail disappearing into the shrubbery...

Vancouver Aquarium is pretty kewl ... a tropical fish themed area, a native fish exhibit, an outdoor jungly bit which led on from the tarantulas and cockroaches thing, and a sea lion, dolphin, beluga whale, sea otter set of pools thingy outside where you could watch them swim about from above the water, and from underneath through windows ... we saw Nemo, and Dory, and some turtles, and a tortoise that seemed to spend all its time trying to escape through bars that were put just a bit too close together to let it through ...

Post-dinner (just the restaurant downstairs from the hotel rooms), we went to see 'Lord of the Rings: Return of the King' at the cinemas with Uncle P, Aunty B and J, courtesy of some tickets Uncle P had from those rewards programs on credit cards. We did a 5 minute summary of 'LOTR:The Two Towers' to mum and dad, who hadn't actually managed to catch the movie at all in the last year, and then got our popcorn and coke free courtesy of some more vouchery goodness. We weren't insane enough to go for the current LOTR special - a HUGE bucket of popcorn in a collectible commemorative LOTR bucket, a LARGE coke, a chocolate bar (supposed to be Hersheys, but they'd run out of the specific one for the deal so it was open slather on what candy was there), and then a refill on both the drink and the popcorn, valid only for the movie session you were going into ... eeeek! I know LOTR:ROTK is long, but does it deserve quite that much popcorn?! We were stuck in the front of the cinema (much neck craning - this screen was BIG) again, so Decay and I will have to see it again, probably at the end of the cinema run so we might get better seats... there doesn't seem to be a concept of allocated seating in cinemas here or USA ...

25 December 2003

Merry Christmas! We started today off with a getting up early to meet the grandparents in their apartment and take them with us to Yum Cha breakfast, before driving over the border to Seattle to meet more of my dad's brothers and sisters and their associated kids... For those of you who know us, the concept of breakfast is not normally one you'd associate with us much (beyond the first cup of coffee of glass of coke...), but we had much breakfastyness, of all the things we associated with Yum Cha lunch, but somehow fresher in the morning... At one point, a waitress had descended upon Decay, proffering spring rolls and other fried things, when Decay heard the sound of another waitress calling out Char Siu Bao were available... head swivel, pointing over there 'I want that one! *grin*' ... Decay was officially the only non-Chinese person in the place in the morning... Dad managed to get lost in the carpark to this restaurant - he couldn't figure out how to go up a level in the carpark so he circled level 2 a fair few times, with Decay and I looking on from another car quite befuddled...

After some mixup with the instructions on which rest area we were supposed to be meeting my cousins, and a fun time with questions at the border crossing ('Where do you live, where are you going, why are you going there, who do you know, how are you related (to Decay, Stirfry and me), and how did you two meet? (to me and Decay)' ... strange, but we didn't get a boot check), we eventually got there, after I woke up the Stirfry with the question, 'Are we related to these people?' - he'd met the cousins back in April ... we met up with mum and dad and the grandparents and the other associated cousins who'd come along to meet us at the rest stop but led the parents to the first meeting place while others stayed back to wait for us, at K & M's house, and said hello to the goldfish living in the backyard ... then we went to visit another house, where we saw some little turtles living in a tub, and more kewl goldfish (including one that looked a bit like our departed Trout A La Creme), and then we went over to Dad's oldest brother's house for a Christmas dinner and meet all the Seattle (or flown into Seattle) cousins in the one spot.

I don't know what's supposed to be a traditional Christmas dinner, American style, but we had roast turkey, roast venison, really yummy sushi rolls, various and assorted Chinese food, some made and some from the local decent Chinese takeaway, and then pumpkin pie, lemon tart, fruit flan, and red bean soup for dessert ... We did what most people who'd know us would do when faced with a large bunch of people - we played card games... Texas Hold'em Poker was the game of the day, and after a while, various dads took over their kids hands, and there was some really crazy random betting going on ... made it difficult for those down on their monopoly cash to really get back into the game ... and then there's the whole exclaiming in a language a few people didn't speak ... I gotta remember to be there to translate what I understand at times (:

26 December 2003

The other stuff of conversation from last night, revolved around planning some stuff to do around Seattle that wouldn't bore the Stirfry Ninja to tears. Well, it was that, or Charlie Chong - one of my relos apparently looks like him ... wedding photos of relatives bring out the 'let's draw up a family tree!' thing for some reason ... The last time he'd met these cousins, he was also stuck at the grandparents apartment with no way to get out and do fun stuff without the oldies ...

We met up with M & K in the morning, and visited Pike Place Market ... which is where the fish throwing dudes in some well-known inspiration and team-work promoting video are from ... we saw them throw fish, and Decay bought a T-shirt to wear especially during work meetings...

At some point, we left the parentals and the grandparentals behind with M&K (who made very good tourguides), and walked to the Space Needle... we didn't end up going up though ... it was a bit too expensive for us, and even justifying the trip with some food didn't make it any more worth it since the menu prices were the most we'd seen anywhere so far... what is it with restaurants up in high places that makes the food cost so much?

We found out later that the parentals etc had made a lunch out of their trip up the Space needle, but we made our fun in the EMP museum next door, housed in a wibbly wobbly building that looked very kewl, designed by Frank Gehry. We had a lunch of sorts at the Turntable Restaurant in the public access area of EMP, and were met with service from a waiter who understood both irony and sarcasm ... he got a big tip, and we'll probably find out he's Canadian at some point... *grin* ... we wandered through the exhibits in EMP, and played with lots of hands-on stuff as well ... one thing we've noticed, is that unless there's a designated place to line up for stuff, the concept of waiting your turn for something doesn't seem to occur to people ... it's probably why there are pre-built winding about line thingies all over Disneyland, but then there are queue jumping facilities in the Fast Pass thing anyways...

Nevermind... we had dinner at Dad's younger brother's restaurant, which meant we had ABSOLUTELY no hope of shouting a bill at all during our stay, but again, we had sliced rude thing, which my cousins called 'gooey duck' (gui duck? erm.... someone help?) ... it's some sort of clam thing, which is hugely... phallic in appearance... anyways, it's a delicacy, and we ate it ... there were lots and lots of courses, and there was even an iron chef moment when we had mango rice - when cousins H & K read the menu, they couldn't figure out whether this was meant to be sweet or savoury, and K's translation of a dish as 'Vegetables arranged in the shape of a fan' turned out to be spot-on ... the dessert was a sweet soup made of peanuts and lotus seeds... the Chinese being punny people had to get some special meaning out of this - they wanted to wish us to have many kids - one per year!

Anyways, it was back in the car post-dinner to drive back over the border to Vancouver ... the border check was even less eventful than the one coming in, and we got back to the hotel and packed up everything ...

27 December 2003

This was one of those wake up early, drive to the airport, catch a plane and then wait around for 10 hours kind of days... at least by the time we got on the plane to take us from LA to Sydney, we weren't confronted by screaming kids... that's definitely a good thing. We also got exit row seating, to give Decay some extra leg room ... we were sat with a professor dude who was taking his 40 grad students on a study trip to Australia ... he couldn't figure out what a particular item was in the complimentary travel kit that Qantas provided ... actually he didn't want to ask - it was just a toothbrush!!! Decay told him to get his mind out of the gutter, to the amusement of the steward dudes seated opposite us during takeoff *grin* ... we found out that one of the air hostesses had her birthday on the same day as me, and eventually we worked out we'd get 4 hours of birthday allowing for international date line and timezone changes ... I spent most of those 4 hours of my birthday asleep though (:

29 December 2003

Some luggage managed to get itself lost and not arriving in Sydney with the rest of us, so we had to leave our details with the baggage services dudes ... clearing customs was fine, you don't get tend to get your bag x-rayed if you say you have stuff to declare, it seems? Maybe we just don't look all that threatening to anyone ... well at least I don't?

Eventually, we arrived in Melbourne, having flown from Sydney, over Canberra (where we could see the street layout from above - very circly), and we were glad to be home ... got a taxi, didn't have to tip the dude who hailed the taxi or whatever, and got home all in one piece....

yay!

Update (03.01.04): The luggage has been found - it was still in LA, for some unknown reason ... we'll have our backpack with a week's worth of laundry tomorrow morning ... erm... yay?