Skypad SOLD

It's done! The skypad sold in under a week.
















After four years of living 18 floors above the Burnaby skyline, with truly spectacular views of the winding Fraser River, Vancouver Island,
the North Shore mountains, the city and Mt Baker, I'm trading it all for island living.
But that's for a later story.


It took a month's hard graft to get the flat into shape.

There was the painting of rooms, skirting and doors; fixing all the little bits that needed fixing and changing the gawd awful brass fitting the previous owners had installed in the bathrooms & replacing them with nifty, less fussy brushed nickel ones.




And cleaning like I've never cleaned before.
Who knew there were special cleaners for every surface imaginable?
The wood surfaces needed lemon oil, the kitchen counters had to have a strong but fresh orange smelling cleaner, the stove top need a ceramic cleaner, the windors & mirrors had Windex and the floors required some evil smelling anti-bacterial glunk.

Thank goodness the spring flowers were already in the garden centres!
The cheapskate in me reasoned that daffodils, primroses & pansies would last longer than cut flowers when we had our open house. so we just had to have them.
Especially if we had to have several open houses over the next couple of weeks with the property market being so depressed and all.



The colourful spring flowers really do add cheer and life to both the winter battered balconies.

But, it looked like we didn't need the daffodils to last that long after all. In fact, they only needed to last a few days. Because Jeff Harrison, our super realtor worked a miracle.








It chuffes me to say that we got multiple offers the next day after the open house.
And less than a week later, today as it happens, there was confirmation that the apartment has been sold. At the asking price.
In a word...
YIPPPEEEEEE !!!!!




Looks like my years of hard slog as a journalist and stylist at Home & Decor Magazine wasn't wasted.
All in all, I'd say that it paid off. In spades!

Have a look and tell me what you think.

When Cousins Come to Stay

The good thing when family comes to visit is not just familiar faces bringing stories from home, and this trip in particular, cousin Diana schlepping in 4 kg of kopi Cap Karpal Tanker (ooohhhh yummie), but that I actually get a chance to visit the sights of Vancouver again.

After living here almost 3 years, I've gotten cynical about this city and have been gradually only concentrating on it's negatives. Like, the crazy road system, with it's wonky inbuilt frustrations every km or so and bleeding heart liberals insisting that hard earned tax-payers money is used to provide safe injection sites for the continuing of illegal drug addiction instead of finding a way to help them kick the habit. Coming from a smoothly run and fairly drug free Singapore, little things like this really began to grate.

So having the cousins visit compelled me to look for places of beauty & fun in and around Vancouver. Places that celebrated the energy & specialness of this city that butted between the foot of the Coastal Mountain range and the Straits of Georgia. And, once I relaxed my prejuidices and looked, these places weren't too difficult to find.

The Van Dusen Gardens for one is my favourite. It 's in Vancouver West and has large grounds divided into plants from different regions, lakes laced with pretty Japanese maples, a funky hedge maze and gorgeous temperate gardens. The garden is in the middle of the city yet, when you sit on the benches by the small lake,under the dappled shade of the willows, you hardly notice the city.

The trip up to Burnaby Mountain help give the girls a view of the city. From mountain to river, from the deep fjiords to the open ocean. Also there were the funky totems donated to the city of Vancouver by a sister city in Japan.


The problem with being a tour guide is that although you can control the itineiry, you can't really control the weather. So, for most of the time the cousins were here, we had the wet & grey Vancouver is fairly famous for. Still, that didn't stop us tough & intrepid sight-seers who picked the wettest day for a hike up Lynn Canyon somewhere in between some of the North Shore Mountains.
The suspension bridge alone was well worth the visit, and that's not counting the spectacular waterfall you get to see while standing in the middle of the bridge. The 20 minute hike to Rice Lake was, however, a disappointment (for me at least). BC hydro was working on a big water treatment plant there and the trail led past it.

Still, by the time we got to the smallish deserted lake, the sky had dried up , at least for a bit, and the view of the lake that unfolded before us was quite magical.

Not too bad for a city of over two million, to be able to feel like you are alone in the wilderness by taking juts a 20 minute hike.

Go Canucks GO!!!!!!! Going Native on Hockey

From a girl who comes from the humid tropics, the appeal of the rough sport of ice-hockey is hard to understand. In Singapore, we had no ice on which to skate let alone shoot a puck. So, you can imagine my gob-smacked surprise when I discovered myself cheering and yelling like a banshee when the Vancouver Canucks Hockey team scores a goal (they call ice-hockey hockey in North America, and what the rest of the world calls Hockey, they call Field-hockey. Go figure!). All of a sudden I'm logging on to websites called NHL.com( National Hockey League) and Canucks.com to find out who's injured and who's not; what the stories were behind no. 44, Tod Bertuzzi (thank god he no longer plays for us) being boo-ed at games and how the Swedish Sedin (interestingly nos, 22 & 33) twins came to be in the Canucks team. What was happening to me?
I was being swept up by the very game that I've thought too violent. Too many guys getting viciously banged against the boards.Broken teeth and broken sticks. Argh. I might do just as well watching wrestling. But wrestling's never made my blood pulse as hockey does, nor blacken my disposition so when the Canucks loose a game. There was something more to this.
The last time I felt this quickening was during the Malaysia Cup when the Singapore football team beat some Malaysian state's team in the finals after which they summarily kicked us out of the cup. And thus was born our sad little S-league. T'was the same feeling with the Canucks, there was something to cheer for. A little pride in the home team. Or in my case the team in which I've made my home. It's a way to say "neh, neh-neh, neh, neh . We are better then you-oo!", without having to go to war ala George Bush. No one really dies, just your heart if your team doesn't make it.

For me, going through an entire hockey season's really helped me bond to this, my adopted city. Joining a hockey pool, being sent emails of crazy, funny Canuck videos, seeing cars all over town with little Canuck's flags flying from their windscreens reflecting the pride & support for 20 men on the ice. The same 20 give or take ( as I've learnt from mid season trades) I've come to know and vigorously support. This game has given me something of great value: a common history & touch point with the native Vancouverites. Which any new immigrant will tell you is precious. And best of all, the Canucks have given me something that, sad to say, even Singapore can't, a chance to world class sporting team out there fighting for fame & glory.

For those of you who want to know and have had truncated communications with me on MSN , skype or yahoo because of hockey, the Vancouver made it to the playoffs where the 16 best teams out of a 32-ish team league battle for the Stanley Cup. Yesterday we beat the Dallas Stars to go into the semis. Where we will meet the Anaheim Ducks.
And with so many Chinese in Vancouver, I'm sure will be able to come up with a good recipe to roast Californian duck.

Seredipity by the River

Be careful, very careful when taking new ways home. You never know what will happen when you do.
Two Sunday's ago, a suggestion to go home by a way we'd never tried before, took us well into the depths of Ladner and onto the south bank of the mighty Fraser river (you know, where the Salmon go to spawn?). Ladner is still in the Greater Vancouver area and stuffed in a none-too-clear area in the Corporation of Delta just above Tsawwassen ( where you take the ferry to Vancouver Island). Yeah, I'm still having problems finding where things are. But then, that's the part of the adventure in living in a new place, isn't it?
We decided to drive toward the river and then along it to find a place on the bank where we could go look out and maybe take pictures. After passing, substantial dikes on which were an amazing collection of dilapidated fishing huts and shops, a surprisingly modern pod of floating homes with a marina and the S&M industries building (it's not what you think. S&M in this case, stands for Seafood & Meats). We come up on a modest little park. And that's where we saw it!
At first, I was just interested in the lovey-dovey pair of seagulls nestled on top of a pile. Then, as Bogart said to Kate on The African Queen, you learn to read the river. Where there is whitewater are rapids, where the water's surface is disturbed, is not surprising, something underneath. Out by the pier, just below the nesting gulls, the water was indeed not as smooth as it should have been. Odd, I thought to myself, waves usually swell and then fall. But this wave just continued to bob higher and higher. Then it hit me! Silly girl! It wasn't a wave, it was a head! A wet black, smooth & shiny head. Then this thing crawled out of the dark water and flopped onto the wooden deck like a jelly giant slug. Heaved itself tall and looked like it was right chuffed with itself. Never having seen a seal, or was it a sea lion(?) real life & up close before I was spell bound by this lumbering flippered creature sun-tanning on the deck. I must have taken 50 digitals, until my batteries went dead. Ten minutes later, when we left the park, our Californian Sea Lion (I checked up when I came home), was still lounging in the sun as bold as brass.
Amazing to a tropical girl like me, the working Fraser River is a ecosystem teeming with life of all sorts, not only fish. Tourists come from all over to visit Steveston, at the mouth of the river to see the Californian & Steller Sea Lions congregate & frolic. But only the males. It seems that all the females are back in the breeding ground looking after the pups. Sound familiar?

This from a tourism write-up I found online

"In the waters around Vancouver other marine mammals can be seen. Many of them follow the migrations of eulachons, herring and salmon, particularly around river mouths. Harbor seals are very common and can be recognized by their spotted coats, large eyes and earless heads. While there are two species of sea lions, the giant Steller sea lions are rare as compared with the California sea lions. Tour boats take tourists out to observe sea lions from the Steveston docks near the mouth of the Fraser River

Every year during April and May, when the Fraser River estuary is teaming with spawning eulachons, thousands of sea lions migrate into the area to feast on these herring-sized members of the Smelt family.

California Sea Lions (Zalophus californianus) come all the way from Mexico and the large Steller Sea Lions (Eumetopias jubatus) travel South from the Arctic.

Only male sea lions travel here. Females and calves stay behind. Because they have no rookeries to protect, they are playful and non-territorial."

Cherry Blossom Sky

Every start of spring in Vancouver, much of the city is covered by a blanket of wafty, delicate profusion of every shade of pink. This is my third spring here and even though I've seen it before, the sight of entire roads lined with fluffy, puffy pink trees takes my breath away. Every time.

I'd always associated cherry blossoms to Japan but there are an incredible 130,000 cherry blossom trees planted in the parks, roads and boulevards throughout Greater Vancouver and in most recent years a Cherry Blossom Festival runs from around mid March to April. This comprehensive website gives a map of where the different cherry species can be found. It also organises events that have a somewhat Pacific Zen feel about it. Like trolley tours , Cherry Jam Concerts and Haiku competitions. This won the 2007 Canadian Haiku award

street hockey
young boys shoot cherry petals
into the net

Terry Ann Carter
Ottawa, Ontario

The story of Vancouver's Cherry trees starts way back in the early 1930s. The mayors of both Kobe and Yokohama presented the Vancouver Park Board with 500 Japanese cherry trees for planting at the Japanese cenotaph in Stanley Park. These were to honour Japanese Canadians who had served in WWI. By the mid 1900s, the park board started to replace the older and much larger elm, maple and plane trees that were traditionally planted with cherry trees. Because the roots of the larger trees were breaking up pavements & roads.

And now for a fleeting 2-3 weeks, the sunlight is made gentle with the frosty glow of pinks and plums of the Cherry Blossom. Life is good!

And in celebration of Spring ( altho it did snow a bit not an hour ago), I've entered this picture of a Cherry Blossom Sky to the Fuel My Blog photo competition, called "Outside My Window".

Transformation of a Cushion

This is what I've found since coming to live in Canada. Independence. Those of you who know me and have grown up with me will be arching your eyebrows in in surprise asking "What the heck is she talking about?". I've always been the most independent of spirits, following the trail of my own goofy little star and have mostly done things for myself. But not like this though. Not like here in Canada.
Here, I've had to learn to cook my own meals (no cheap, delish & convienient Tiong Bahru hawker centre nearby), plant my own herbs and make my own cushions, slip covers, scarves and curtains. Unlike Asia, where retail is cheap, variety is, well, various and GST is abysmally low (so stop complaining), Canada has a retail sector that has seen it's heyday (like 20 years ago) and GST is made up of provincial & federal taxes, which together comes up to 14%. The cheapo Singaporean in me couldn't bear to pay out so much, especially for taxes, especially when she knew how much things really cost in Asia. Ergo the girl is now DIY mad.


Forgive me as I indulge and run thru my latest project with you.

Once upon a time, my loving sister, Veron decided that I was in dire need of the jangle of beading and flashes of hot pink in my life. She, from her deep generosity, proceeded to buy me the most darling square cushion from Delhi, where she was living at that time.

Unfortunately, The Spawn of Demon, who also answers to the name of Minke, decided that it was her dominion and proclaimed for her own. Well, that was in Singapore, where the cooling satin fabric of the cushion and the bling of the pink was all good & appropriate. But since coming to live in the land of cold & rain, she's favoured wool & tweed instead. And the poor pink beaded cushion was then only used for the Minkster to practice her own special brand of feline manicure.

Enough already! Said her cheapo DIY mistress and rescued the rare (in Vancouver at least) & highly reusable kapok (cotton wadding I think it's called in English) from the tattered cushion's insides. The following documents the cushion's road to recovery.