team morale event: go-karts by.peter tue.nov.14

We had another morale event yesterday. This time we picked an indoor, non-violent event – go-karts. After lunch 15 of us met at the venue, “Champs Karting”, which was just down the road from the office.

A competition was organized and there were prizes awarded to the first 3 positions. Each person would participate in 3 trial races, each with 10 laps. The 5 drivers with fastest lap times would then compete in the final race which had 18 laps

Each round of time trials had only 4 drivers while everyone else watched from behind a glass window. There were arcade machines and pool tables but most were carefully watching the race. The atmosphere was very competitive, with everyone keeping track of the top 5 times. There was plenty of emotion when a person dropped or entered the top 5.

Finally, after all the trials were completed the final 5 were announced. I was delighted to be on that list. Since I had the third fastest time, I was placed in the middle of the pack. Up to this point, all the races had been free from incident but the final was a different story. There was a pile up in the first lap where I was t-boned and facing the barrier. By the time I recovered I was well out of the race in last position. A few laps later I caught up to the two in front of me but was involved in another pileup. This time I faired better and managed to grab the third position. The rest of the race there were several minor collisions involving the last three who were trying to compete for a trophy position. The first two had luckily broken away and were not caught up in any pile ups. The race finally finished with me holding onto third for a podium finish....

 

vista released to manufacturers by.peter mon.nov.13

After 5 years of development, delays and redirections – Vista was finally released to manufacturers (RTM) last Wednesday. Vista will be made available to enterprise customers at the end of November and the general public at the end of January. The Vista release will be on a scale comparable to the release of Windows 95. I’ve been using Vista for 6 months now. In the beginning, I was reluctant to move from Windows XP because XP did everything. So I dual booted my PC to run both XP and Vista. I even had XP running on Virtual PC in Vista because I thought I couldn’t live without it. Over time, as Vista became stable and issues were ironed out it grew on me. Now I use Vista exclusively on all my PCs and laptop. The last time I was this excited about an OS was when I saw Windows 95 for the first time in our school computer lab. This sounds a lot like a paid commercial but I promise I wasn’t paid…oh wait…never mind :P Anyway, the litmus test will be in a few weeks.

To celebrate the momentous occasion, a party was thrown on Friday and everyone connected to Vista was invited. With rain expected, it was another parking lot party. We were promised this party would be bigger than the Beta 2 party back in May. There was a band, pool tables and free food but nothing that actually differentiated it from the Beta 2 party. It was raining, cold and the food was so-so, so we didn’t stay very long. However, we did get to see a video that looked like it might be the ad for Vista. We were also told we get the entire Thanksgiving week off :).

 

we didn't think she could get any cuter by.cristina sat.nov.11

peter's just brought lana back from this grooming salon in bellevue and they did an amazing job! lana looks and smells incredible :-) ... i must ask what shampoo they use because i loooove the scent!

lana hungry after her salon visit

it's hard to believe that lana has been with us for 3 months already. she's over 5 months old now and has more than doubled her weight since her arrival (she came to use at 4lbs(1.8kg) and is now over 10lbs(4.5kg) ) ... and yet she still looks so small to me! but just this week, she was actually able to jump on our couch and on our bed on her own for the first time! peter and i were so proud!! :-P

 

our vancouver visit by.peter sun.nov.5

Cristina’s manager rewarded her team with Friday off for their hard work over the past few weeks. I decided to take Friday off too so we could make the most of her time off. Unfortunately, I had a meeting on friday morning which I couldn’t avoid so a half day off was the best I could do. I wanted to make this weekend different and make it a real R & R weekend for Cristina so I suggested we visit Vancouver. She was really excited about it because we have talked about visiting Vancouver since we got here but just haven’t really had time. The only problem was what to do with Lana while we were gone. I checked up a few dog boarding places on the Eastside and even emailed the ANZAC email list for suggestions. There was one place that offered boarding for $20 a day for an enclosure and $30 a day for a “suite”. I was in the middle of calling for reservations when Sam messaged to tell me he and Alice could take care of Lana over the weekend. We didn’t want to inconvenience them but since the boarding place was booked out, we took them up on their offer.

So after my meeting on Friday, I headed home to pick Cristina and Lana up. We headed immediately to Kirkland to drop Lana off at Sam and Alice’s place. Then we filled the car up with petrol and headed north on the 405. We had not made any booking for hotels and had not even checked the directions to get there. Our plans were just to head north, follow road signs and play everything by ear. The traffic north was fairly congested until we got past Everett. After that, it was all clear until we reached the border two and a half hours into the trip. At the border we were briefly stopped at booths (similar to toll booths) and questioned. We were asked about our visit, our relationship and they checked our IDs. Since we left our passports in our bags, they accepted my Washington drivers license and Cristina’s work authorization card.

On the Canadian side of the border there was an information center and currency exchange so we stopped to visit. We picked up some Vancouver tourism pamphlets and changed some of our US dollars to Canadian dollars. Seeing the familiar queen’s head on the Canadian notes was somehow comforting. However, it was a little odd seeing speed signs with 100 on them. It’s a good thing they had “kph” below otherwise their southern neighbor would think Canadians were crazy driving at that speed with the sort of weather they have up here. How do these Canadians get away with using the metric system? We continued on our way relying on road signs. It was raining most of the way and traffic towards Vancouver was really bad. The number plates on the cars had captions saying “Beautiful British Columbia” but looking at the weather around us it was anything but.

It was about 6pm when we made it to the outskirts of downtown Vancouver so we discussed our dinner options. One of Cristina’s workmates had recommended a Filipino restaurant in the area so we decided to give it a try. It occurred to me that I've never eaten in a Filipino restaurant – even when Cristina and I were in the Philippines. The restaurant was called "Galing Galing" and served a selection of Filipino dishes with rice. Most of the dishes I had already become acquainted with while eating over Cristina’s parents' place. Seeing all these dishes again reminded me of all the dinners we used to have with Cristina’s parents and the games of mahjong afterwards. Dinner at Galing Galing definitely made us both feel a little homesick. After dinner we drove around to see if there was anything open. It was still early on Friday evening so we were hoping to find something. Everything seemed really quiet. We even headed to Chinatown and found the place mostly deserted. It was raining heavily so we decided to find a hotel. We found a few from the pamphlets and called the ones that had car parking and internet. We ended up picking a modest 3.5 star hotel called Howard Johnson located in the heart of downtown Vancouver.

The next day it was still raining and cold outside. We had initially planned to visit the Capilano Suspension Bridge and Stanley Park but the rain was too heavy for outdoor activities. So we decided to do some indoors activites – we visited Pacific Mall. There were a lot of expensive brands but after walking around the only thing we were interested in was breakfast. We wanted to experience an authentic Canadian breakfast but couldn’t find anything in the area so we decided to try the next best thing – Chinatown. Who knows, maybe they'd have stir fried polar bear or sweet and sour venison :P.

Chinatown in Vancouver is much larger than Seattle’s International District. We found parking and walked around looking for a "yum-cha" restaurant. Surprisingly we couldn’t find one, so Cristina asked for directions from a fellow pedestrian. The guy said their really weren't any good "dim-sum" places around but recommended a place called "Hon's" that was just around the corner. So roast duck, roast pork and BBQ pork was ordered from a waitress who had a lot of trouble understanding us – not because we didn’t have American accents but because she could barely speak any English.

After lunch we made a last attempt to find something worthwhile to do in Vancouver given the bad weather. Not finding anything (okay, I'm sure we could have tried harder), we decided to cut our trip short and head back to Seattle. On the trip back we realized every other song being played on the radio was by Celine Dion. Celine harassed us in our car all the way to the Canadian border which had a backlog of cars. There we signs indicating 40 minute delays at the border checkpoints. When we made it to the booth, we were questioned about our immigration status. This time my drivers license and Cristina’s work authorization ID was not enough. We had to pull out our passports and US VISAs. It was easy to get into Canada but harder to get back. For some reason, when the immigration official saw that we were Australians he was suddenly much friendlier... "E-3 visas?!? You know you can stay here in the US forever with these visas right? You can work here .. and stay forever!" We just laughed and nodded. I guess he thought these two foreigners had struck gold hehe.

On the way back we stopped by Seattle Premium Outlets which is like a much larger version of Sydney's Birkenhead Point. We also dropped by the Wal-Mart Supercenter. Interestingly, these businesses leased the land from an Indian reservation. While we were here, we decided to pay tribute to a little piece of native American Indian culture – the Tulalip Casino. Gambling is illegal in many states in the US, including Washington State, but it seems Indian reservations are exempt from this law. Cristina and I each “donated” $10 to the Tulalip tribe ;)

We made our way back to Sam and Alice’s place to pick up Lana. We stayed for a while and then headed home. When we got back to Sammamish, we noticed the street lights were off and there were leaves all over the road like a tornado had passed the area. There was a blackout and the entire suburb was in darkness. We fumbled our way into our condo and I searched for our emergency torch. I located the torch and started looking for candles. Cristina warned me not to light up her decorative candles (haha) so I had to look a little harder for used or out-of-fashion candles :P. Without electricity there was no TV, computers or internet. Ah, there’s probably no better way to escape the daily grind of modern life....

Although we didn't get the chance to do a lot of the things we had planned for our Vancouver trip this time round, Cristina and I still really enjoyed ourselves. Just getting away, spending quality time with each other and experiencing new things together made the trip worthwhile.