Thursday, March 09, 2006
wednesday
diana called me at 8.30 am, 45 min after i'd woken up to find both my compatriots uncontactable. she asked me how i was feeling and if cypress was still on. i told her it probably wasn't coz ben was uncontactable. but ben called me less than 2 min after she hung up, and apparently he was awake and therefore barring my supposed tiredness (not), cypress would still be on.
so we met at the bus loop at 9.30am to take the #4 to waterfront and the seabus across where we would catch the 10.30am shuttle to cypress.
well. we reached the said bus stop at 10.45am. needless to say, the shuttle bus was nowhere in sight.
so it was breakfast @ lonsdale quay - i had clam chowder and halibut and chips and raspberry cheesecake ice-cream - YUM!, an attempt to catch a movie at a theatre tt would only open at 6.15pm (unheard of in sg!!!), and back to downtown to get a bus back to ubc.
except tt ben wanted to stop by this theatre to get tickets for this movie 'paradise now!' about 2 palestinian suicide bombers who were contemplating their final missions, so we stopped by broadway and alma... only to find out tt tt box office opened at *7.00pm*.
so yeah. so much for tt. fortunately, we found this treasure trove in this bookstore tt ben had discovered the previous friday. he'd wanted to collect this series of herman hesse books tt he was interested in reading (he's a closet nerd lah. wahaha), and while he was looking at his books diana and i went through the stack. diana saw this graham greene book tt she later bought on ben's suggestion, while i was torn between e.m forster's 'a room with a view', 'where angels fear to tread' (the title stuck in my head after listening too much to my 'system of a down' songs) and martin amis' 'einstein's monsters' and 'dead babies'. i stuck to martin amis, esp after the really friendly store manager found me 'time's arrow' (i wanted 'london fields' but he didn't have tt) and gave us all a 20% discount (coz ben bought so many books). ben himself bought 4 more books, including a margaret atwood, this book 'white noise' tt diana had been recommending, and albert camus' 'the myth of sisyphus'. i wanted to get nietzsche's 'beyond good and evil', but it wasn't in stock. there were a couple more really interesting books as well like 'the dead sea scrolls', 'the essential koran' (it's amazing how the first few chapters of the koran and the bible are exactly the same) and stuff on ancient greek mythology, but yeah... i didn't think i was going to be tt hardcore. haha. i did however, get enticed to buy this book called 'live from golgotha' by gore vidal, this satire with gore vidal writing himself as st. timothy during 96 A.D. and um. it was so fucking irreverant i had to see how far he would go when it came to christianity. let's just say he went pretty damn far.
so the three of us ended up settling at think! cafe with cups of coffee and tea and armed with our books. i started out with the gore vidal book, but funny as it was (and SO blasphemous if my mom knows what i am reading she will burn the damn book - for one thing, he portrays st. paul as a gay having sexual relations with timothy; and jesus is a 5 ft tall guy who is as wide as he is tall; and tt he was tempted by the lure of the modern world), i didn't see the point of the book soon enough to keep up, while ben was finding the myth of sisyphus a little boring (ok. he was falling asleep a lot while reading the book), so he decided to read my gore vidal book, and i ended up reading time's arrow and finishing it.
and time's arrow is really worth a read, if only for the fact tt it is written in a backwards world, starting from the end and ending at the beginning. all the sequences go from back to front, such tt everything has a reverse effect. for example, you start a transaction with a prostitute having sex with her, then dressing her, and taking money from her. and if you're working at a shelter for abused women, you watch women come in well, get increasingly worse and have more prominent bruises and abrasions as time goes by, and finally leave the shelter to go lie in a park or basement somewhere till their husbands come home and remarkably remove the injuries from their bodies.
short book, but relatively draining. interesting read though. especially on a nice rainy afternoon/evening with your friends. relaxing.
after this, we went to our now-bumped-up-to-#1 fave hangout: the chinese restaurant, for a nice long relaxed dinner and chat session, mainly between ben and diana about their childhood and primary school/secondary school days (i didn't have much of a childhood to begin with, so i didn't have anything to contribute), complete with endless refills of tea by the lao ban niang who knows us way too well. hahaha.
and then it was on to starbucks for our usual after-dinner coffee and my cinnamon dulce latte. and guess what? it started SNOWING!!!
in march!!!
for the first time in months, it was snowing for a while in vancouver. and it was just so pretty. i couldn't help going out to stand in the snow and watch as the flakes just swirled from the sky to the ground.
and so... here are the pictures....
highlights of today:
1. ben sleeping. (unglam photos alert)
on the bus.
on the seabus.
me being evil. wahaha.
and later at think! cafe.
2. snow!!!
hair's a mess. yeah i know.
cypress tomorrow!!! oh, for sure. ;)
now playing: hotel costes - cafe de flor
so we met at the bus loop at 9.30am to take the #4 to waterfront and the seabus across where we would catch the 10.30am shuttle to cypress.
well. we reached the said bus stop at 10.45am. needless to say, the shuttle bus was nowhere in sight.
so it was breakfast @ lonsdale quay - i had clam chowder and halibut and chips and raspberry cheesecake ice-cream - YUM!, an attempt to catch a movie at a theatre tt would only open at 6.15pm (unheard of in sg!!!), and back to downtown to get a bus back to ubc.
except tt ben wanted to stop by this theatre to get tickets for this movie 'paradise now!' about 2 palestinian suicide bombers who were contemplating their final missions, so we stopped by broadway and alma... only to find out tt tt box office opened at *7.00pm*.
so yeah. so much for tt. fortunately, we found this treasure trove in this bookstore tt ben had discovered the previous friday. he'd wanted to collect this series of herman hesse books tt he was interested in reading (he's a closet nerd lah. wahaha), and while he was looking at his books diana and i went through the stack. diana saw this graham greene book tt she later bought on ben's suggestion, while i was torn between e.m forster's 'a room with a view', 'where angels fear to tread' (the title stuck in my head after listening too much to my 'system of a down' songs) and martin amis' 'einstein's monsters' and 'dead babies'. i stuck to martin amis, esp after the really friendly store manager found me 'time's arrow' (i wanted 'london fields' but he didn't have tt) and gave us all a 20% discount (coz ben bought so many books). ben himself bought 4 more books, including a margaret atwood, this book 'white noise' tt diana had been recommending, and albert camus' 'the myth of sisyphus'. i wanted to get nietzsche's 'beyond good and evil', but it wasn't in stock. there were a couple more really interesting books as well like 'the dead sea scrolls', 'the essential koran' (it's amazing how the first few chapters of the koran and the bible are exactly the same) and stuff on ancient greek mythology, but yeah... i didn't think i was going to be tt hardcore. haha. i did however, get enticed to buy this book called 'live from golgotha' by gore vidal, this satire with gore vidal writing himself as st. timothy during 96 A.D. and um. it was so fucking irreverant i had to see how far he would go when it came to christianity. let's just say he went pretty damn far.
so the three of us ended up settling at think! cafe with cups of coffee and tea and armed with our books. i started out with the gore vidal book, but funny as it was (and SO blasphemous if my mom knows what i am reading she will burn the damn book - for one thing, he portrays st. paul as a gay having sexual relations with timothy; and jesus is a 5 ft tall guy who is as wide as he is tall; and tt he was tempted by the lure of the modern world), i didn't see the point of the book soon enough to keep up, while ben was finding the myth of sisyphus a little boring (ok. he was falling asleep a lot while reading the book), so he decided to read my gore vidal book, and i ended up reading time's arrow and finishing it.
and time's arrow is really worth a read, if only for the fact tt it is written in a backwards world, starting from the end and ending at the beginning. all the sequences go from back to front, such tt everything has a reverse effect. for example, you start a transaction with a prostitute having sex with her, then dressing her, and taking money from her. and if you're working at a shelter for abused women, you watch women come in well, get increasingly worse and have more prominent bruises and abrasions as time goes by, and finally leave the shelter to go lie in a park or basement somewhere till their husbands come home and remarkably remove the injuries from their bodies.
short book, but relatively draining. interesting read though. especially on a nice rainy afternoon/evening with your friends. relaxing.
after this, we went to our now-bumped-up-to-#1 fave hangout: the chinese restaurant, for a nice long relaxed dinner and chat session, mainly between ben and diana about their childhood and primary school/secondary school days (i didn't have much of a childhood to begin with, so i didn't have anything to contribute), complete with endless refills of tea by the lao ban niang who knows us way too well. hahaha.
and then it was on to starbucks for our usual after-dinner coffee and my cinnamon dulce latte. and guess what? it started SNOWING!!!
in march!!!
for the first time in months, it was snowing for a while in vancouver. and it was just so pretty. i couldn't help going out to stand in the snow and watch as the flakes just swirled from the sky to the ground.
and so... here are the pictures....
highlights of today:
1. ben sleeping. (unglam photos alert)
on the bus.
on the seabus.
me being evil. wahaha.
and later at think! cafe.
2. snow!!!
hair's a mess. yeah i know.
cypress tomorrow!!! oh, for sure. ;)
# posted by Kitana @ 3/09/2006 03:43:00 PM 
