Chuc Mung Nam Moi from Vietnam!

We arrived yesterday in Vietnam. The weather here sits around 32 degrees C, and it's not really all too bad.

Vietnam's much cleaner than I thought, actually. Although you'd hardly call is clean. Our hotel sits in the Backpacker Alley in Saigon, and at roughly $10/person, it's not too bad.

Just a quick recap of the last couple of days:
Sat (Feb 17): First went to the War Remnants Museum, Xa Loi Pagoda, Spring Flower Festival 2007, Mirianman Temple, and finally walked around La Loi Street to observe the Tet (Vietnamese New Year) lights and crowds.

Sun (Feb 18): Spent the morning on a 1/2 day tour of the Cu Chi Tunnels, about 1 hour away from HCMC. Got back to the hotel where we met with our voluntary guides from Saigon Hotpot. They took us down Nguyen Hue flower street, and then we went to a Saigon Hotpot member's house where his mother cooked us dinner and we had a small celebration the Vietnamese way. It was great, and their friendliness and hospitality were surprising, geniune, and very appreciated. Tomorrow, we have a long day ahead of us. Lots to see. Lots to do. Better get some sleep.

Simon Fraser University recently launched its new SFU brand. Lead by a simple red block with "SFU" in white and a new "Thinking of the World" tagline, the website was has been redesigned too.


The Common Look and Feel website gives more information about the design, as well as downloadable templates.

Between this and UniverCity, it seems there've been a lot of changes since graduating only 3 years ago.

Three years in a row I haven't won any prizes at our company (lunar-)year-end party. But we had a good party this time, with lots of red wine. Lots of people drunk. It was fun. At at least I won the largest prize at our departmental party, which is good enough as a 4th place prize at the company party (value-wise). So, I guess I can't complain.

Happy Lunar New Year!

Lunch for the next few days will be salads.
Today's salad (which won't differ much from tomorrow's):
- romaine lettuce
- red bell peppers
- orange bell peppers
- thin cucumbers
- mushrooms
- alfalfa sprouts
- another type of green sprouts
- cherry tomatoes
- japanese salad dressing
- fresh ground pepper
- vegetarian chicken nuggets (on the side)

Never been fan of mouthwash, unless it was in someone else's mouth - in which case, I encourage it. For one, mouthwash burns. But more importantly, I always found it too inconvenient: the uncapping, the pouring, the drinking, the re-capping, the swishing, and finally the spitting. Not to mention that there's always a bit of liquid left in the cap when you screw it back onto the bottle. But finally, I found a way around all those unnecessary steps.

I put my Citrus Listerine into a squeeze bottle with a little pull-off cap. No longer going for exact measurements, I just pull off the cap and squeeze as much as I want into my mouth and swish away. My mouthwashing time overhead is reduced to 2 - 3 seconds. Damn I'm good.

Some final thoughts on Japan...

• Some Japanese people spit too. And not to the side, but right in front of them.
  
• Toilets in Canada are plumbing. Toilets in Japan are electronic devices. They have seats that heat your bum bum, electronic consoles for bidet, wash, spray (and at different angles and strengths), have gears that lower the toilet and cover slowly instead of letting them drop, and provide a handwash with the water used to fill the tank for the next flush. This is the kind of toilet I'll have when I buy a new home.
  
• The more I see, the more I realize that Japanese people don't really dress up all that much. Only in certain areas.
  
• But food in Japan isn't as expensive as everyone says. You can get a ramen (noodles) for 670 yen, or a chicken curry + miso soup for 290 yen. But of course, you can also eat very pricy meals here.
  
• Women will do their make-up on the subways, which is kind of strange when you see two people sitting next to each other.
  
• There are a lot of homeless people. I've mainly seen them around the Tokyo National Museum area and Ueno Park.
  
• Polite? Only kind of. They're polite in the Asian way of being polite, but not when they need to cram onto a packed subway. Then it's no holds barred. They'll push and shove until they're on, and leave it to the people behind them to push and shove more.

[written 2 days ago]

I guess it's hard to keep up with blogging while on vacation. The days are long and packed with activities, which doesn't leave much time for sitting down and giving updates. But I'm doing that now.

The exhibition I attended was okay. Slightly on the boring side for me. As I expected, this wasn't really a pressure situation, and there wasn't too much work for me to do but stand around and help with the demos if need be.

Saturday:
Headed from Shin Yokohama to Tokyo, and met some coworkers (in Japan for a ski-trip) at their hotel. Went to Yoyogi Park (dead grass and bare trees?), Harajuku (uneventful on a Saturday), Shinjuku (just walking around and shopping for gifts), and then to Hard Rock Cafe at Roppongi. A few (4 - 5) coworkers bought Nintendo Wii's, which is much cheaper (and available) in Japan. That night, I stayed at CY's place - which is much further out, smaller and dirtier than BC's. But who's complaining?

Sunday:
CY, his friend N, and I went to Harajuku and took pictures of some of the interesting artifacts (people) all dressed up. Visited Meiji Shrine (pretty nice), and went to Shinjuku for the rest of the evening. The evening was an eat-fest, having different kinds of katsu, sweets, and maki's in a food center downstairs from Shinjuku Station, then hitting up Yakitori Alley, and finally landing at an izakaya restaurant. In between the eating, we also went to the Toyko Metropolitan Government Building to overlook Tokyo at night from 45 floors up. Stayed at BC's place that night.

Monday:
Was up-and-at-'em before 7am to go to Tsukiji Market where top notch sushi is to be had with the day's catch. It's a huge market with tons of edible goods from the sea. According to most travel resources and tourists, you should go for a ~3000 yen breakfast of sushi at one of the restaurants next to the market. My ski-trip coworkers told me that they had 3100 yen and 3500 yen meals -- roughly 10 or 11 sushi pieces. Based on what I saw at the market, and from I gathered from them, I decided to approach it differently. I started with a 3000 budget and decided to buy my own seafood straight from market-folk, thereby cutting out the middle man. My critria: no cooking necessary, and as little as possible (because they normally sell in larger quantities). I got two pieces of Japanese tuna cut into sashimi slices, Hokkaido uni (sea urchin), raw shrimp ready to serve, 5 large scallop, fish eggs (the big kind, not ebiko), and salmon sashimi mixed in some flavoring. Then I bought some microwaved white rice, soy sauce, and wasabi from a convenient store. I ended up going over budget, but for my 3842 yen, I got far more food than my coworkers - though less variety, and possibly lesser quality (assuming the people buying for restaurants pick grade A ingredients).

I made another trip to the Metropolitan Building to get some "near aerial" photos during the day. Then met CY at Asakusa. Walked around Asakusa until after it got dark (around 6pm or 7pm), and went to Akihabara. Met up with BC for dinner, randomly finding a restaurant. This restaurant, whose interiour was designed to look like a cave, had incredibly cheap prices... but deceivingly so. A mountain of deep fried chicken filets just $550 yen, and a large piece of fish only $700+ yen. But what they didn't tell us was that each person had a table charge of $380 yen. Anyway, all added up, still a pretty good price for the food that we had.

Tuesday:
My last day in Japan was spent walking around Ueno. Packed most of whatever hadn't been packed in the morning, and then walked out to a couple temples and then to the Tokyo National Museum. After the museum, and went to a couple more temples. The highlight of the day was going to Jomyoin Temple, where I saw an old man sitting quietly alone painting the temple. I said 'hello' and just watched him painting for a few seconds. Then I asked him if I could take his picture. He showed me his beautiful artwork from his sketchbook, let me take photos of them, and then gave me a postcard-sized copy of one of his paintings, which I asked him to sign on the back. All this done with only hand gestures and "this" and "thank you" in Japanese. Went around Ueno a bit more afterwards, and went back to BC to pack up the rest.

Now I'm on the Skyliner train back to Narita Airport. Looking forward to getting off my feet and getting some rest.