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AlfieLau 4 days ago
It's been interesting times here at the paper. If you didn't see our Wednesday paper, you missed an article on the passing of my colleague Mia Thomas and a great column from Julie MacLellan, who's a much closer friend to Mia than myself. I worked with Mia for almost six years and her cubicle was always in shouting distance of mine. I look back in amazement at all the fun times we had – sometimes I had more fun than she did – and that's what I choose to remember about Mia. She was pretty patient with my immaturity, she put up with my 62-word sentences, and the one time she really should have killed me, she didn't. If you haven't heard the story, here it is: We were doing a fiction writing contest amongst some of the editorial types here and it was Mia's turn to set up the rules. Well, one of the rules I just didn't want to follow was to use these four words: cate, judder, myrmidon and tabaret, in our stories, with the proper definitions. Well, my way around that was to have ...
AlfieLau 4 days ago
Here's a little rant for you. I'm on the Vancouver Parks Board e-mail list – strangely, nothing about the impending closures of the Stanley Park petting zoo and the Bloedel Conservatory at Queen Elizabeth Park – and today, there was a nice little coupon offer for us winter golfers. From now until the end of the year, on any day when there's an 80 per cent chance of rain – as determined by the Weather Network's forecast at 8 a.m. each day – you get $10 off the applicable green fee if you present the coupon. Hmm, if there's an 80 per cent chance of rain in the month of December, and I'm going to all-caps for a reason, I'M NOT GOING GOLFING!!!!! Yes, battling the rain and cold while chasing after a little white ball no longer appeals to me much in the month of December. My general rant is basically if you're going to offer a coupon, offer me one that I might have a reasonable chance of using. Golf courses are notorious for having coupons like GET ONE FREE GREEN FEE if you can ...
AlfieLau 4 days ago
For all those Olympic-philes who are complaining about $1,000 hotel rooms, here's the solution to your housing problems. The Eldorado Hotel, at the corner of Kingsway and Nanaimo in East Vancouver, is opening up its doors as a youth hostel during the Olympics. I don't think you necessary have to be a youth in terms of age to stay there, but if you're young at heart, then $34 a night for a bed at the Eldorado has to be one of the great deals in the city. I've travelled extensively throughout the world and I love staying at youth hostels, especially in places where I don't intend to spend much time actually sleeping. In New York City, I have three favourite places I like to stay, one on the west side of Central Park, another on the east side and one in Chelsea. I haven't had to pay more than $30 a night for a bed there and in one of them, I even had a private room, with a TV, for only $25 per night!! This summer, in Dublin for the three U2 concerts, I stayed in another great ...
AlfieLau 6 days ago
For the first Thanksgiving in four years, I'll be in Canada. By Thanksgiving, I mean American Thanksgiving, that great excuse to eat turkey, watch football and then get just enough sleep before you go out on the real American sport: Shopping. For those frequent travellers to the South, you know that many stores actually open their doors at midnight Friday, meaning if you spend Thursday night doing some planning, you can be shopping in mere hours, or as soon as Thursday becomes Friday. The outlet stores at Tulalip are open at that time, but because of work commitments, I won't be there. The next big time for sales is 5 a.m. on Friday, when most stores get their Black Friday sales going. The doorcrashers usually go until 11 a.m. Regular shoppers then can get some shopping in before the next wave of cheapness hits, usually first thing Saturday morning. And if hanging out at a mall fighting the hordes isn't your idea of fun, if you wait until Monday, it's Cyber Monday, where ...
AlfieLau 14 days ago
In a bid to increase sales of its coffee – Starbucks, are you paying attention? – McDonald's is offering free small coffee between breakfast hours at its Canadian locations from now until Dec. 1. I saw the commercial last night and while I haven't taken advantage of this offer yet, I quite enjoy McDonald's coffee. Get to your local Mickey D's for this great offer before December hits
