I’m back from Asia! Landed last night and I’m extremely jet lagged but I thought I would make a short post to update with some photos from the trip.

I haven’t had time to go through the photos from my good camera but here are some snaps with my iPhone. The photos were all edited with the Photoshop Mobile app or the CameraBag app.

This Asia trip was with four of my girlfriends and we had an amazing time – it was a 5 city whirlwind tour in two weeks and was filled with lots of yummy food and great bonding time. The order of cities was: Shanghai -> Guangzhou -> Taipei -> Hong Kong -> Macau

Below are some select iPhone photos. I’ll be doing another post in the near future with photos from the good camera. The photo at the top of this post is an aerial view of Hong Kong from a gondola inside Ocean Fun Park.

A view of the other gondolas and gorgeous sunset at Ocean Fun Park

Nathan Road at night in Hong Kong – Love the twinkling lights strung across the street.

Live shrimp at an open restaurant at the night market.

Some of the best grilled BBQ meat I’ve had in a long time. Super tasty and very fresh.

Came across this sign while taking a night stroll in Macau.

(I’ll be posting on behalf of Naomi today!) It’s been a week since I left rainy Vancouver with 3 of my girlfriends for Asia and it seems like I brought the rain with me. The first stop was Shanghai and the city didn’t really feel like I was in Asia – probably because of the high number of expats we encountered and the very modern/expensive feel of the city.

We were only here for 2 days so we tried to make the most of it. The hotel we stayed at, Swissotel, was amazing and the service was great.

After shanghai we left for Guangzhou which is supposed to have some amazing food and we were not disappointed. We ate dimsum every day and had our share of xiao long bao (dumpling). Our days were filled with shopping and getting the most painful two hour massage for $15 Canadian. I felt like a bag of jello afterwards.

We are currently in Taipei and eating our way through the city. The food is amazing here and there are tons of new and exciting things to tempt our palettes. A notable place we ate was a restaurant called Modern Toilet.

The seats are made of toilets and you eat food out of toilet bowls and drink out of urinal shaped cups. The food is average and it’s more the novelty factor.

The Taipei 101 building is also very cool. It was the tallest building in the world until 2003 I believe. Tonight is our last night in Taipei and we’re off to Hong Kong tomorrow for the next 5 days before heading home. I’m excited to see what adventures Hong Kong has to offer. Here are a few other snaps from the trip which include a pair of goldfish converse shoes I picked up!

I was born in the 80’s so I never really had the chance to listen to records growing up. By the time I developed my diverse taste in music, CDs were all the rage and my father had put most of his vinyl collection away. Over the years, I’ve become more of an audiophile and decided to begin listening to vinyl records. I purchased my first turntable (a Technics SL1200 MK2) and was floored by the sound. From that point on, I was completely hooked and began to buy lots of new LPs from my favorite artists. After a month or so, I began searching for vinyl on Craigslist and came across an ad for over a hundred old 78rpm LPs for a mere $20.

TWENTY DOLLARS.

At 20 cents a record I couldnt go wrong and immediately called the seller.

The conversation went something like this:

“Hello?”

“Hi! I’m Ryan, the guy that was interested in your 78rpm records. Are they still around?”

“Oh yes they’re still for sale. You sound like a younger guy though. A lot of the music is oldies and mellow stuff. It’s none of that “boom boom” loud stuff.”

“Haha, oh that’s okay. I’m still interested in seeing it though!”

I drove out to Burnaby (a suburb of Vancouver) to have a look and Harriette, a middle aged Asian woman greeted me at the door. The records were in her rec room, stored in a dusty, musty smelling trunk. I peered in and flipped through the records, recognizing a few – Frank Sinatra and Perry Como – but that was it. Many of the records were in good shape with stored sleeves and album booklets. Others were caked in dust and looked like they needed a good cleaning before playing.

Harriette had a puzzled look on her face that said, “Why in the world could a guy in his mid 20’s want an old box of records”.

Finally she said, “What do you plan to do with these records? They’re so old! Oh I know! You’re going to record them on your computer and sell the CDs!”

I wasn’t planning on selling them but will definitely be listening and archiving them to MP3.

With my new purchase, we’ll be doing a new feature on this blog featuring one song a week from this record find, but unfortunately I’ll be limited to what I can post due to copyright laws. I currently don’t have a proper record player or recording setup to play these on, but in about 3 weeks time I hope to have that sorted out. These 78rpm records can’t be played on most conventional players because they need to be spun at 78rpm (as opposed to 33rpm & 45rpm for normal records). I’ve done plenty of research on how I’ll be playing these and will share my findings in the coming weeks. Stay tuned!

I was in Las Vegas for four days this past weekend. Before I left, the back panel on my Canon 5D went completely dead on me. While it was getting fixed, I had no other means of taking photos other than with my iPhone. It wasn’t ideal but I made do with what I had. Here are a few of those photos using Takayuki Fukatsu’s Toy Camera App.

I didn’t get to do much antique shopping as I stayed mostly on the Vegas strip. The photos below are various pictures taken around Las Vegas and Hoover Dam (definitely worth visiting!).

As an added picture bonus, here are a few snaps from Gibsons, BC and Vancouver using the Toy Camera App.

If you haven’t had a chance to read my iPhone Toy Camera App, you can check it out here.

Last week a friend of mine from Seattle came up to Vancouver for the weekend. We decided to visit a few of Vancouver’s classic attractions – The Commodore Bowling Lanes and the Movieland Arcade located in the heart of Granville Street.

On any given Friday night, Granville Street is the busiest street in Vancouver. It’s filled with pawnshops, pizza joints and notable venues such as the Orpheum (one of Vancouver’s oldest theatres) and the art deco inspired Vogue Theatre.  This night we opted to stay out of the clubs and venture into the basement of Canada’s oldest bowling alley.

The Commodore Bowling Lanes opened in the 1930’s by a man named Mitz Nozaki aka “Mr. Bowling”. This was a time when bowling pins were still set by hand and blakies, soft coverings for your shoes, were used to play. The concept of renting bowling shoes didn’t appear until the late 1930’s.

As we took turns tossing the small 5 pin bowling ball down the lane I took some time to look at the old plaques and photographs that line the walls.  Not much has changed in the alley as you look around and compare it to the old photographs that hang at the back. Sure, there are now neon lights installed and newer automatic pin setting machines but the wonderful charm of this old bowling alley has stayed the same. I can’t help but be amazed that my parents in their youth played in the same exact lanes that I’m now playing in, 80 years later.

After our bowling session we decided to get some fresh air and walk around the block. We headed to the Movieland Arcade which according to Wikipedia is “the last home of authentic, 8 mm ‘peep show’ film booths in the world”. To keep things less awkward for our visiting friend we chose to finish the night playing the Pinball machines instead.

For anyone visiting Vancouver, make Granville street a destination to visit!

Commodore Lanes
838 Granville Street
Vancouver, V6Z
(604) 681-1531

Movieland Arcade
906 Granville Street
Vancouver, BC V6Z 1L2
(604) 681-6915