Victoria

From Banff, we drove to Kamloops. It's a town that looks a bit like Reno, desert based and overgrown + growing. Here's the thing with Kamloops...I've been there twice, once when my family went to Banff and again this trip. You don't get pictures in Kamloops. It's about 6-8hrs from civilization so you get there late, go to bed, and get up, and continue.

We also drove through Salmon Arm and then onto the ferry to Vancouver Island. I was unsuccessful in obtaining either Salmon Arm or Salmon King hockey jerseys.

I think we hit Victoria during a spell of rare good weather. This is C, a seaplane, and the sea.


Took a tour of the legislature building and had lunch in their govt subsidized cafeteria. I may have had fries several days in a row.

On display in the front is the giant golden mace of justice.
Victoria Harbor. We were so out of place in our hiking clothes. You can't get away from the masses here. For reference, the Fairmount Empress hotel is on the other side of the boardwalk.


I just had to include this picture. We stayed at an awesome golf resort hotel with C's starwood points. Now I don't know if golf can survive in a community that gets more rain than seattle, but they're investing very heavily in the resort + associated condos. And it was here that I had the best pasta ever...smoked salmon and caperberries.

Vancouver

We didn't spend that long in Vancouver, one full day, and in our time there, it rained one day and less so the next. I thought these rainguards are quite clever:

Olympic clock, vandalized on the other side the night before. Their colors are lime green and cyan and the vancouver2010 gear, vastly overpriced. Beijing gear came at a better discount, my one fuwa sweatshirt, my only souvenir.


The obligatory skyline (is this the skyline?) from Stanley Park. Every great city needs a mass of green to call its own park and every great city needs a defined skyline.

This island exists under the overpass and contains a public market to rival that in the Ferry Building.

No, I didn't miss Obama's speech. We finished our izakaya meal and rushed through the shopping district (hikers don't shop) to return back.

Lion's gate bridge. Like SF, you gotta drive through the park to get to the bridge. On the other side, far off, is Whistler where the actual Olympics will be held. According to the tourbook, it's also where the rich vancouverites live. Although I visited Richmond (Chinatown) and Vancouver non-shopping district, and it all looked pretty good. I think they have a higher standard of living.
And in the airport, waiting for my return flight, I looked down at customs for people entering Canada. They're all from Japan. The tourbook said Vancouver has more Japanese restaurants, and more izakayas than any other type of restaurant.

And so that was our vacation. We go places thinking of going just once, so it was a lifetime of alpine meadows, lakes and trailmix crammed into two weeks.

I've returned

Made it back safely from the great white north. Will post the pictures, the best ones, in some form over the next week.

It's 80 degrees inside my apartment with 80% humidity. It's sick. And the mailman lost (?) my mail.

It's Monday so I went to the beach

After cooking, post bar, next on my list is a visit to the beach. I'm going to show you a typical relaxing Yellowcat beach day.

First, have to stop by in Hillcrest to get my cheese sandwich from Breads & Cie. It's the default san diego bakery, has a complete monopoly, stocks the shelves in the Von's and Trader Joe's alike. Anyhow, their best sandwich is this cheese/pesto mix which sounds disgusting but is actually super good and a good small size.

San Diego puts up these crazy signs in all its districts. I kind of like it, it's a remnant of the 1970s and gives the city character.

Below - Mo's is a gay hamburger place. It's across the street from the anti-prop 8 headquarters, which is HUGE.

Then I drive across the Coronado bridge, which is 2 lanes/way, 3 lanes/other, and unlike bay area bridges, completely FREE. I took a walk all the way under the bridge, but then turned because the 9/11 bridge watch guy was there.

Finally made it to the beach. No beach trip is complete without a tour of the Hotel Del, wishing I was rich enough to stay there.

They've torn up the ballroom floor. You know what else got torn up? The floor of the convention center after Comic-Con. Wouldn't it be awesome if comic con was at the hotel?

Two hours of sun, back home. That's the good beach trip. The bad ones end up at Mission Beach, or even worse, Mission Bay =(

Post bar

I spent 3 nights in downtown taking the bar exam. Suffered through an earthquake, bad-mediocre downtown food, and took a total of 18 hours of testing. And ya, I'm worried I failed, worried a lot. You can't help it because you think you did well on some things, but then so did everyone else. Most people fail by only a few points. But I had a good time there.

My friend and I shared a room at the Hard Rock, it's a new hotel that opened just a year ago, right across from Petco Park. Ultra hip and modern. Rates aren't so bad because Comic Con just happened, and the exam's in the middle of the week. Here's a shot of the bathroom.

My bed.


Post-bar, after worrying about failing, I made a salad nicoise. I don't even have a plate enough to contain it all. The green beans are under the tuna. The best salad nicoise I ever had was in the Roppongi district of Tokyo. In this one I used canned tuna and added butter lettuce, unlike the recipe. It's very simple but very time consuming.


For dinner, my usual meal of fish, veggies, and crazy good wild basmti rice. Dessert's on the right, apple crisp. It's apple pie for those of us who can't do crusts.


So I'm still worried about failing, most people I spoke with are absolutely confident they passed. I think I did better on the essays than everyone else, and did well on 1 of the two performance tests, but I'm sure I failed the MBE. And from what I've seen, you have to pass the MBE to pass the exam =( I may be back in February, alone...

Things I do during study breaks

At this point in the game, it's very difficult to study more than six hours a day. I get these terrible killer headaches and backaches and stomachaches. If I fail the test, it's going to be a direct result of the headaches, it's a physical negative reaction to practicing law. So I take a lot of study breaks now. More than before in May or June.

Sometimes I read the New York Times. But yesterday, I watched their video about poor people/foreclosed homes. I'm a sucker for those stories. Anyhow, in the video the lady said she had a super headache unlike any ever (sounds like mine every day), and then she had a stroke. And now she's losing her home.

Sometimes I cook. I made the Ratatouille Tart at the bottom of this SF gate article. I looked at their pictures and thought, gee they just have a bad set director and bad photographer, the recipe looks alright. Actually the tart is mediocre at best and I apologize to the photographer. I think whoever contributed the article and set up the pictures should be removed, because a store bought pie crust does not in any way mimic a tart crust. I don't believe the contributor is a regular either...but I could be wrong on this.

Today I read xkcd archives. And this one strip reminded me of myself and all the reasons why I shouldn't be a lawyer. They don't creative commons their stuff, its share for non-profit use.



Comic Con starts at the end of the week. Guess who doesn't get to go.

Berkeley; Santa Clara

Classic Berkeley: the druggie trainstop



Classic Berkeley II: Vic's Chaat House



Classic Santa Clara: HOT



A giant cat



One awesome leaf that's just a little bit flawed.

San Francisco part III; Return of the Fog

More beautiful shots of the city...we just start wandering around, we've been there so many times it's all the same and Ive got multiple copies of every shot now at all times of year...


The blueprints of the ferry building.


Ferry building @ closing time.


Reason why we didn't stay for the fireworks...the fog...

San Francisco Part II

Also I got engaged. We had a picnic in the botanical gardens in stereotypical san francisco mist.



C got me a non-blood diamond. Actually it could be super blood because it's "vintage" which means they coulda killed a lot more people/environment when they first made it. Sorry about you don't get a picture of the ring...at least not now.

San Francisco Part I

I got back from a weekend in the bay area last night. C gave me the tour of the bay area.

SF China town, see the happy tourist family in the window?
The trinkets they sell in town. Somehow my camera singled out the nekos!

And glimmering crawfish, oh I want one.