These are baseline stock config. This is the right door.

But too tired.

I’ve been back for a few weeks but haven’t blogged anything. I’ve mini-blogged with pictures on flickr, but one sidestory wasn’t in the pictures.

On the flight back the attendants were asking if there were doctors on board. A retired nurse volunteered to help out. Turns out it was someone at the back of the plane having some heart related problem. Before the ex-nurse left her seat, the attendant asked “Do you still know how to use the blood pressure meter?”, and she said, “Um, do I still know how to ride a bike?”

The problem was serious enough (and apparently more than one person was ill) that Captain decided to detour our plane and land at Anchorage in Alaska. At that point I was thinking something bad was gonna happen.. like they’d have to carry someone off the plane.

After the plane landed, we saw a bunch of tall, firefighter-type men came onboard with all their gears and wheelchair, but I didn’t see them needing it. Good news I guess.

That’s the first glimpse of Anchorage I had. The people that needed help left the plane, and we continued on to Vancouver. I’ve never heard of Anchorage before. Just seems like there are lots of these quiet, pleasant places that I probably won’t get to visit. Would’ve been nice if we could get off the plane for a bit, like tour bus. End of Story.

I have no picture of my car. No chance to (i.e. too lazy) to take a picture of it for the blog. Logically, I’m either driving it, or it’s parked in a garage – and no good picture will come out of either of those situations. In car brochures we always see pretty pictures of cars traveling on moody roads, or parked at some amazing locations. You’re really buying a dream when you buy a car. Consumerism at its best. It’s the same with almost everything we buy really.

My friend who got a new car recently was telling me, he didn’t feel very thrilled when he got his new car. I’m feeling the same. Getting a car seems to be more about needing it as a transportation, than it is about buying happiness. I was pretty happy when I bought the iMac, for example. And it’s also a utility item. So you’d think, buying something 15x the cost of an iMac, should give you 15x the happiness. I’m pretty happy about getting this car, but not 15x.

Anyways I got a Volkswagen Tiguan, base model with none of the options installed.

Three Easy Steps to getting a car:

1. Pick the Car
Stop dreaming about a Lexus and get a budget figured out. My first thought was the Corolla. It was too crappy and boring, so I moved on to the Mazda3. It was kinda small, and for a few thousand more I could get a Tiguan. So that’s what I did. RAV4 was completely sold out when I went to see it. Don’t like how the Civic looked. Accord and Camry seemed too big… It was more of a process of elimination.

2. Pick the Colour
Black and White, different shades of Grey, Red and Blue. I think it’d be awesome if we can pick our own RGB values for a car. But we’re far from that. We can’t pick our own colors for anything we get at any store anyways. Don’t like Red cars, don’t like blue cars. Grey didn’t look too good. Black.. didn’t suit this car. So White is the best colour again.

3. Pay
Curse the world for how this works, zone out when the salesman goes over the numbers, and hand over your money.

So it wasn’t too hard after all.

More than one week late (or two). They’re just sitting on the kitchen counter and slowly disappearing.. kinda sad that the bunny’s friends are being eaten. I got them cheap because Easter is over, and had no idea there was going to be this bigger bunny in the box.. and a carrot.. AND ladybugs that doesn’t even look like they came from the same world as the bunny! This box of chocolate is too awesome.

That also means we’re short on cars. I’ve been car shopping for more than a year, so it’s really time that I get one. Hopefully it’s the right decision.

Dad says I used to eat this when I was small. Very likely since they’ve been making this for a hundred years. I vaguely remember it, except the can was a lot bigger.

Found @Daiso

Nothing better to start the new year than writing a blog about it half way through the first day. And continuing the tradition started last year, I’ll recycle a picture from the year. Turtles live a long life. So they’re year-related. I’ll have to admit I wasn’t counting down last night. I was playing Crono Trigger and then realizing it was already 12:37.

Looking through past year’s pictures in my flickr, 2008 wasn’t too bad. The last 5 months tho, just zoomed by (after I started working at the new job).

Looking forward to 2009: Recession. President Obama. Windows 7. SkyTrain Finishing. It’s feeling unpredictable right now.

Anyways I only discovered it 2 months after it was pushed onto my computer.

Just finished Fallout 3 unexpectedly. Unexpectedly because I thought I was just playing one of the quests, and all the sudden the ending showed up. Not very happy with the game, but I think I’ll go back and play some more.