Hotluck, Burnaby

Ben suggested to have lunch at Hotluck in Burnaby on a Saturday afternoon. Both the boys did not want to join. So, it’s just both of us. I guess that we will have to get use to such setting as our boys have grown up now.

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Ben said, Hotluck is usually pretty quiet on week days during lunch hour.

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The lunch special here are mostly noodle dishes.

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Ben decided to go for the super set for 2 people for $33.95. Ben ordered his favourite dish of Country Style Fried Pork with Fresh Hot Green Pepper. The pork were thinly sliced and fried to a crisp and the generous amount of the hot green pepper makes this dish really fragrant and spicy hot. (more…)

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Lunch Special from Meishan Restaurant at Crystal Mall

Ben brought me to one of his recent favourite lunch place at Crystal Mall for lunch on a Saturday. We went alone because the boys slept in on weekend.

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Meishan is not busy even on week day. Perhaps there are lots of cheaper alternative at the food court.

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We were there quite early, about 11:00AM and we were their first customers of the day.

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We ordered from their lunch special which is $7.95. The above is Stir-fried Sliced Pork with Tofu and Cabbage. There is a side of spicy vinegarish cold bean sprout.  The amount of rice was humongous; at least 2 regular bowls of rice. (more…)

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Ipoh Bean Sprout Chicken at Crystal Court

Arkensen needed us to drop him at school to return a lot of library books and to complete one of his lab work with his partner. After dropping him off, Ben decided to go to Crystal Court for lunch.

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Finally, I got the chance to try the Ipoh Bean Sprout Chicken stall. At previous visit to this food court, there was no tables available. It was not easy to get a table this time but we managed to find one.

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I ordered the Hakka Pan Mee which is handmade noodle  with ground pork, fried anchovies, shiitake mushroom and some fried tofu skin.

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The noodle was al-dante (a little chewy) and it was good enough for my craving after not having this dish since my last visit to Malaysia. (more…)

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No 1 Beef Noodle on Willingdon Ave

Arkensen was selected for a play testing of Dragon Age game at EA Sports near BCIT.  The testing is about 45 minutes. So after we dropped him at the EA Sports, we went to the nearby No 1 Beef Noodle to have lunch.

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We had blogged about this place a long while ago. No 1 Beef Noodle is affiliated with Beefy Beef Noodle on Main St.

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Ben ordered the house special noodle with beef, beef tendeon and three wontons. This is $9.50.

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The house special noodle came with thin noodle. Apparently, we can have a choice of thin or thick noodle as we heard another server attended to other customers but the server who attended us did not ask us for the choice of noodle. I would have prefer thick noodle for a better texture. (more…)

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Perfect Taste Restaurant in Crystal Mall, Burnaby

Ben and I were in the Crystal Mall looking for lunch options.

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We decided to try the Perfect Taste Restaurant which located outside the mall.

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The Chinese name of the restaurant indicates that it is of northern eastern Chinese cuisine. The dishes come with free rice.

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The restaurant was empty when we were there on a Friday afternoon.

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We ordered a couple of dishes since it’s just the two of us. The first dish is a stir fried potatoes, egg plant and green pepper. When the dish arrived, we can smelled the fragrance of bean sauce. (more…)

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Want Want Hot & Spicy House at Crystal Mall

Ben brought me to Crystal Mall for lunch on one of the weekend that he was in town. He knew that I’m too lazy to drive all the way to Burnaby by myself.

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The new item in the Want Want Hot & Spicy House stall caught our attention. They serve dry hot pot now. Yeah, my favourite dish.

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You pick the ingredients and it is charged by weight. Although the poster above said minimum order is 300g, I remembered the server told us the minimum order is 400g. Besides the ingredients, you have a choice on the main to go with it; ranges from rice to various noodles. You also have a choice of the level of spiciness.

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Our plate above came to $11.20. My choice of main was broad potato noodles and the second highest spiciness which is “da la”. (more…)

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Appetizers for Lunch

Of late, this is what I am so addicted to.

But I am not gonna tell you where I had this. I want to see if any of you can make a good guess.

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This is called Pork Slices in Garlic Spicy Sauce. Or at least I think this is what it is called. I had this so many times, I am not sure anymore.

The waitress already know me and she knows that I order this ALL THE TIME. What I am sure is that it is called #7. Every time I walked in, I just smiled at her and just say “#7 and 1 bowl of rice”.

For some reason they don’t … (more…)

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My Lunch: Return for Taiwanese Beef Noodles in a Vietnamese Restaurant

Yeah it was a dumb mistake on my part yesterday. Ordered the wrong dish at the Green Bamboo Viet Noodles. I know this sounds kind of odd. I did not want to order Vietnamese noodles in a Vietnamese restaurant. I wanted to order TAIWANESE noodles in a VIETNAMESE restaurant. Don’t ask me why. Ask LotusRapper. It was all his fault.

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It is another bright blue skies day today. Since I got to office extra early, I think I go have brunch instead. No more meetings for the rest of the day and just need to deal with paperwork mostly. The Green Bamboo opens early at 11AM anyway.

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It rained two days ago. So the north shore mountains have new snow. Will not last but I enjoy looking at it.

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First customer. Right on the dot at 11AM. Small place right? It can fit 25 people. 30 at a squeeze.

I don’t even need to … (more…)

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My Lunch: Green Bamboo in Crystal Mall, Burnaby

LotusRapper keeps raving about this place that I just gotta blog about it. I want to try for myself why he likes the Taiwanese Beef Noodle so much. I had been here twice before. Just that I did not blog. It was my pre-iPhone blogging days.

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It is such a beautiful day today to be out for lunch. The sun is out in it’s full glory. Blue skies. Have not seen many of those days lately. A bit windy though. So it is a little colder than it looks.

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The Green Bamboo is located at the west side outer front of Crystal Mall. It is the side that faces Willingdon. The sign outside the restaurant says Green Bamboo Viet Noodles. But they do … (more…)

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Breakfast of Champion

Well. It is done. We have initiated the cutover procedures about an hour ago.

It was another early morning for me. Got into the office. Checked all the fury of emails from overnight. Everything fell in place. No big issues. Had a final status review with all team members from Atlanta and Dublin. Went thru readiness checklist. Checked off one item after another. Can hear team is drained from their voices. They gave their all. Can also sense they are relieved. Last minute industry news trickled in. Two more major Global DS announced they can’t cut over at 0000 GMT tonight. Woohoo … Looks like my company will be the first off the starting block. Can imagine there will be a press splash later today! This team should be proud. They beat the world.

After the final readiness meeting was over, cautioned team this is not over yet. Crafted an “RE030 Good To Go” email of overall status. Team recommends we are good. Cutover procedure was to start in 1 hour at 0000 TYO time. Will be a long 9 hour process in three waves ending at 0000 GMT.

Hit the send button. In a way, my role on RE030 is done. Transition from project to operations will be completed by end of day. I will be winding down this phase and kick off the next.

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It is always a surreal feeling at this point of the project. I feel like the center of the universe when the project was in the delivery phase. After this act of handover, it is no longer my baby. The other part of the company takes over. I had to step back while the cutover is in execution.

With time on my hand while the cutover us going on, I thought I give myself a treat. I thought I go have a breakfast of champions. Drove a few minutes to an industrial area. Very unlikely place for good food but this is certainly considered as the best there is for breakfast.

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Went to … (more…)

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