We might as well just post about Frappe Bliss since it was while we were in the Aberdeen Center we first learned that chowtimes.com had been suspended.
Food courts in shopping malls all around Metro Vancouver is so boring. They all look alike with the same stalls selling the same stuff. I find that all food courts are dominated by the same group of restaurants.
I find Aberdeen’s food court is different and a class above all other food courts around. The layout is very pleasing and they have lots of tables. It is bright and for an Asian food court, it is clean and well maintained. The best thing about this place is the selection of food and it is well represented by some of the bigger names in Asian restaurants like Jang Mo Jib and Cafe D’lite just to name a couple.
Having gone through the long cold winter, do you find that it’s kind of overly warm and hot this spring? We do. We wanted to just get out of the house and go out and look for a nice icy cold drink to cool down. Usually we’ll just go to Timmy Ho’s for an Iced Cap but it is just too heavy for us.
The ideal would be an “ice plate” like the ones we had in Well Tea. We thought the best place to look for one is in Aberdeen since we also wanted to go grab some small plates and place mats from Daiso. The closest we got to an Ice Plate was Frappe Bliss.
You have a choice … make your own ($2.36 Frappe with 71 cents per topping) or get one of their nine concoctions. We had the one called the Peanuts Iceberg which is $3.80.
Was it good? It was awful … pretty tasteless. It was also very light — I say it was very airy and had hardly anything in it. I find it intriguing how they managed to make it so fine and that it did not melt much at all despite that. Yucks.
Aberdeen’s Food Court has Wifi. I must add that it was painfully slow. It actually felt like those days when we had the 9600 baud rate modems! We got connected and found chowtimes.com suspended.
If you want to read more about our saga … click below:
This time it was a bit different … our old hosting company (BlueHost) used to post a message saying that they had TEMPORARILY suspended us for traffic spike but this time they did not have that “TEMPORARILY” word in it. Shortly after, we received an email sent to us for the first time for suspension. When we got home, we called the BlueHost support line and was told that they wanted us out of their servers. They did not want to say the reason and our call was passed from one department to another. Then someone just blurted out … “The owner wanted you out”. Huh? Just like that? Without a real justification for the action?
You know what was the kicker? They only left the FTP and CPanel access opened to us and refused to even let us to get access to even our email or WordPress accounts. They won’t redirect us to a proper “We’re Down” page. Nothing. I did not spend much time arguing with them as I think I know the direction came from the top and those poor support guys were just acting on instructions.
I know why they kicked us out. You see, we had been hosted on their $6.95 per month plan ever since we migrated from blogging on MovableType. It was all fine and dandy when we were a mickey mouse blog a couple of years back. The world had changed a lot for chowtimes since … it is a much bigger site today with real serious traffic volumes on some days.
You see, for $6.95 per month there is no way BlueHost is going to make any money … especially not when I call them like 2-4 times a month for support! BlueHost is a highly unethical company in my opinion. Their business model seems to hinge ONLY on hosting small occasional blogs. There are hundreds of people who starts a blog every day and of these perhaps 9o% of them stops blogging after a few weeks. These are the kind of customers that BlueHost wants. If you want to grow your blog, they are certainly not the kind of hosting company you want.
See the chat I had with BlueHost in the screenshot above. BlueHost considers 2-3000 per day hits as “acceptable”. That is just so laughable! They have no other plans other than the $6.95 per month plan … can you believe that? No VPS? No problem for us. I do not mind that as much but their practices of kicking high volume sites out is way too high handed.
I understand if they wanted me out but also go on to help me to transition to another hosting company if they are incapable of hosting bigger sites. But no, they locked me out, left us high and dry and were very reluctant to help in any way. We had enough and decided to move.
We then proceeded to transfer all our stuff to another host (Go Daddy) which has multiple layers of hosting plans. It was a BIG move … 3GB of files and pictures and 35MB of blog data! Bluehost was extremely unhelpful and some support people were samewhat hostile (mind you I was civil in my dealings with people). Then our domain name transfer was botched! That one hit us the most and what caused the extended downtime of 8 days. Without a domain, we were very limited with what we could do.
In this time and age and all the technology around, it was amazing to learn that “there is nothing we can do” to accept the domain name transfer from the losing registrar! They wanted to let the FIVE days for the system to timeout to effect the transfer … AMAZING … there is no button on the system somewhere to push it along. Bullshit, I say (sorry!).
All is good now and am moving on. There is no point dwelling on the past and with an unethical hosting company like BlueHost. It will cost them a lot lesser if they had just been helpful. I understand if they just told me they wanted me to move out but it’s the manner they did it that is just so wrong. If any of you want to host with BlueHost, think carefully before you get enticed with their $6.95 plan. Like they say right? … Good things not cheap, CHEAP THINGS NOT GOOD.
Please allow me to say this … Damn You BlueHost! Actually, I should be more specific … DAMN YOU, THE OWNER OF BLUEHOST! The Chinese have another expression for “damn you” … May your son be born with no buttocks. LOL!
That majorly sucks! What about filing a small claims court case against them for lost revenue? You wouldn’t need a lawyer and the filing fee is pretty cheap.
First off, welcome back. It was a little weird without daily ChowTime posts!
I agree with Jess, that’s a good idea and you should look into it.
So glad you are back…8 days down?!?! Go buy a lottery this week….ok, I’ve been away for a few days so time to catch up on your blog.
And you just mentioned my favourite food court in Richmond, Aberdeen rules!! I haven’t been in a while and after your post, I am going to make a trip there this week..too bad that ice cream dessert tasted blah, it looked amazing!
I’m sorry about the hosting problems. If this one doesn’t work out, you can always try dreamhost. I heard from many people that they have really friendly customer service and great performance + pricing =]
I’m really happy to see you back online. You are my number 1 food blog that I follow, visiting your site at least once a day sometimes more.
As for the frappe, I think you just had a bad combination. I actually like it very much. I usually go with the fresh fruit toppings sucn as mango and strawberry. They are good.
I am glad you picked GoDaddy which in my opinion is a reliable host =)
Hey Ben, I’m with GoDaddy and I really didn’t even know it was that good. I can’t believe you were treated that way. Shame on them! Nice to see you back online! Wait, I just bumped into you today… Nice to see you in person again too!
OMG YAY!!! Finally! haha i was so sad to learn that the site was down T_T… wow Bluehost sucks ><“…. good that you’ve switched to a better host.
At Frappe Bliss, I think the best flavors are the milk ice and yogurt ice. I’ve tried Peanut too and I agree it’s bland. Milk ice with any fruit or fruit sauce should be good.
But that’s cuz I like that specific asian/japanese milk confectionary taste 😉
Hey Ben/Suanne…so good to see you are back online…I missed by daily fix of chowtimes…
Funny…I have a bluehost account I use for experimental purposes…but will be canceling by account once it comes up for renewal…and will make sure to let them know I am leaving because of they way they treated you…very unprofessional to say the least…!!!
happy eating
frank
Nice to have you guys back 🙂
As for the shaved ice, I actually think Frappe Bliss makes the best shaved iced in the city. The peanut-flavored ice is my favorite because it has a creamy, peanut butter-like texture. And their fruit toppings are usually very fresh.
Their shaved ice is super fine and delicate… not like the icy and watery versions found in most BBT places.
Glad you guys are back!
I’ve never been to Frappe Bliss before but I think it’s so light and airy because of the way the ice gets shaved by the machine. I used to have a manual hand-cranked version and the ice it produced was very similar to your pics from above. Too bad I have no idea where my ice shaving machine is now and no idea where I can buy one! :p
so glad to see u back online……very happy!!!!thanks to fix the blog back again……i miss u blog so much…..keep up urs work…..we always support u
Haha… maybe I’ll start adopting that curse: “May your son be born w/o buttocks!”
Glad to see you made it through the whole ordeal! What a headache!
lol – for some reason, a couple days ago I was trying to think of how to translate the “may your sons be born without bums!” saying. I guess you just did it. I haven’t heard that expression since my trysts with 80s/90s subtitled Chinese movies! 🙂
I would suggest you give Frappe Bliss another try. Perhaps you will like their other combinations. I have tried the Tropical Formosa with green tea icy, mangoes, mochi and red bean and it was delicious.
Their shaved ice is amazing because it doesn’t melt right away and become watery like other icy places.
Just wanted to say thanks for the great post ! Found your blog on Google and I’m happy I did. I’ll be reading you on a regular basis ! Thanks again 🙂
Thanks,
Donna
What?!?! Really?!?! I LOVE this stuff!!! Aww too bad you didn’t like it. I thought it was so light and airy..like eating clouds. Maybe you need to try another flavour? Check out my post..I like the Matcha Delight!
Hi guys, i think you should go give it another try. I highly recommend the lychee flavoured ice or green tea flavoured ice. Those ice on their own with condensed milk is good enough. i got thro a week of no solid food from my wisdom teeth extraction on this. they have improved so much now!
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I just tried frappe bliss today and I think it’s great! Their peanut shaved ice was light and not too sweet and not too peanuty, a hint of peanut it was lovely. The texture and taste were creamy yet so light and airy without being cloying like ice cream. It’s still sweet but not overly. It came with some chocolate sauce on top and oreo crumbs. It didn’t look like much topping but it was enough for the mountain of ice. They automatically gave two spoons which was cute but I gave one back, I wasn’t planning on sharing =D
I really think you need to re-evaluate this place, its best in what it does, shaved ice milk with toppings.
Hi Macy:
I am very sure Frappe Bliss is a favourite of a lot of people. We get a lot of google search hits for it and so that tells us people are out looking for this specifically. I guess it is just not MY type of ice dessert having preferred Malaysian style ones like Ice Kacang and Cendol. 🙂 Suanne like it. Oh … Suanne likes everything sweet.
Ben
Thank you for this article. I’m currently using BlueHost as my web host and so far, they seem to be pretty reliable. I’m not sure, though, what other people think about the specifications of the hosting plan they offer, as with other web hosting companies, you may get more.
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