A trip to Vancouver in December

I’m taking a trip to Vancouver between December 24th and January 2nd 2011.

Decided that it would be a good time to spend some time with close friends and family this year. It’s been a great year so far, and who knows if I’m going to be able to fly to Vancouver next year.

Which is why I hope to do something special for New Year’s Eve with friends. Not talking about having a party to end all parties – one can do that any weekend wherever one lives. I’d rather spend quality time with good people, and make memories for a long time to come.

I’m already thinking about the Christmas day menu. Which will probably feature fish or some kind of seafood. We are also going to be hosting my parents’ friends on Boxing Day. I can probably “get away” with cooking my master roast beef. Costco has the right sizes for 6-8 people.

I’ll check out the Aquarium again, and this time definitely go to the Charcoal grill and a couple of other Izakaya places. Oh yes, and as usual, have one ridiculous night with old friends and eat all the sashimi I can. And read a lot. And Bugs Tomato. And doing nothing all day, wearing pyjamas and watching Soviet cartoons. Yep, that’s holidays.

Longing for Weekend Visits

Last weekend my roommate went to Oakville to stay with her parents. She visits them every almost every weekend, and I admit I am wee bit jealous, because I wish I had the opportunity to see my family as frequently. Of course, if we all lived in the same city, I probably wouldn’t be able to see them absolutely every weekend. But I would appreciate the opportunity itself.

I imagine heading their way straight from work, and making it in time for dinner. Upon seeing me, the ever excited Bugs Tomato would leap to me, and then actively jump trying to lick my face once I kneel down. Seconds later, this affectionate little animal would experience problems breathing – chihuahuas are known to have respiratory problemsб – because he gets so excited. After I massage his throat for a bit and wonder how he can be so ecstatically excited to see me, he’s back to normal. I wish I could tell him to take it easy at times.

I would go on dropping my bags and situating myself in the kitchen, either helping mom to prepare dinner (something Russian that I asked for), or more likely, making the whole dinner myself. I love cooking for the family.

In the sunlit dining room (or the balcony, rain permitting) we’d share the food, laughter and recent news. Later we would most likely watch old Soviet movies, or 90′s Russian films. Sometimes mom and I itch for animated shorts of the olden days. Whatever we watch, we enjoy the time spent together.

For the rest of the weekend I would most likely preoccupy myself with either making food for the family, walking on the Promenade along the shore, or gearing up to take my mountain bike for a ride. Last time, instead of biking, I opted out for a hike in the neighboring forest. I definitely appreciate the West coast flora, especially the trees.

Really, I wouldn’t do much while visiting the parents. I always try to be in the present moment, to be calm (doesn’t work, I’m too excitable!), and patient. After the first few days I start to experience a sharp sense of melancholy, because these beautiful days will have to come to an end. I play with Bugs Tomato – he’s oblivious to my upcoming expiry – and I randomly hug either mom or dad. I desperately want the clock to slow down, but it is ruthless.

On the day of my scheduled flight to my other home, I mean it when I say “I don’t want to go”, and already foresee the blue week ahead. Upon the arrival, en route to my bed, I already long for my warm family home, laughing together and the ever ebullient Bugs Tomato.

I Embrace My Country’s Flag <3

At the Russky Dom – Russian House, – in Vancouver. GO CHECK IT OUT NOW. AND WRAP YOURSELF IN A FLAG FOR CHRISSAKES.

I was a little bit disinterested about going into the Russian house at the winter Olympics in Vancouver… until I found out that Cheburashka will be making an appearance and everyone can purchase a furry friend for themselves ($25)… in white, blue or RED! Isn’t that a mood lifting thought??

That’s me:

Even president Medvedev is as cool as I am:

Olympic Spirit in Vancouver

I have been in Vancouver since Thursday night and I’ve had the best visit to date. The XXI Winter Olympic games in Vancouver have transformed the city into a colorful, buzzing and enticing place to be! I wish it was always like that – streets full of friendly crowds (to a limit),  Canadian hospitality in top form (not that it usually isn’t) and a warm community spirit and generally positive vibes. I enjoyed myself so much.

Let’s back up a little. Back when Vancouver won the bid to host the games, I didn’t really care. I also didn’t care that much all the way until the moment I booked my ticket. Anticipation on the plane to Vancouver (via Calgary) grew tremendously and then I burst into endless patriotic cheer and devotion (to two nations) the moment I was greeted by my family.

Olympic events happen once (or a few times) in a lifetime. Sure, one can fly around the world and attend summer and winter games. But hosting the top-notch sporting event of such calibre in your home doesn’t happen so easily. The feeling of being the host city is incomparable as well. One just can’t miss. Whether you’re into Olympics or not, you’ll get in with the program the moment you enter the curious, energetic and friendly crowds enjoying the town.

Few things I’ve noticed:

Almost every billboard is Olympics-related. It’s understandable – the whole city is a canvas for sponsors, they do whatever they like, – and brainwashing. It’s exciting, it’s passionate, it’s positive and it’s fun. But it’s awfully tiring and feels like a constant reminder. You can’t get away.

The city lifted a lot of rules. Drinking seems to be happening from the moment a cultural house opens (10?), many people glued to the screens. Apparently there have been cases of 24 hour shopping hours designed to suck up as much tourist spending money as possible. Lots of streets are closed down for pedestrians. Traffic decreased by 30%, and public transportation use soared (150,000 people used the Canadian line on Feb 12 or 13, can’t recall).

Pizza joints downtown ran out of pizza on Saturday night (by the way, Vancouver pizza is really good and there are tons and tons of places all over downtown), which is shocking. Anarchy-inclined protesters trashed the Hudson’s Bay window displays and embarrassed the city a little. I wonder if the protest was organized via LiveJournal.

The cheer is contagious. Exploring with a friend on Monday, I was way more excited than him about what we were getting ourselves into. After checking out several houses, interacting with national and provincial exhibits and sitting down in front of men’s alpine skiing on a large screen, my friend leans to me and says, “When a Canadian comes on next, I swear I’m cheering”. He sure did.

Lineups were intense on the weekend, so we thought they’d subside by Monday-Tuesday. Didn’t happen. Irish House was a hot spot at 11am on a Monday, heh! Granville street, parts of which are closed off for pedestrians, was a real zoo and made me, a former local, irritated nevertheless. It’s been impossible to speedily get a table at any of the major restaurants on Granville Island. Despite a busybody shit show, it’s still a once-twice in a lifetime experience.

I’ve taken a lot of photos with my bouquet of cameras, and I could probably write a lot more, but I better get to sleep if I want to wake up early morning and get some work done pre-flight. I realized I haven’t had a chance to finish a couple of personal projects and tasks, despite thinking I’d have a lot of free time during the Olympics.

Holiday Update, Mostly Food

I’ve been so busy enjoying the holidays, family and friends time that I have naturally not written any posts. There are many drafts, but I don’t feel like finishing (anymore/yet). There’s updates about books, updates about recipes, adventures, visits to the United States and all that.

Anyway, I will just show you some images of the food and feasts that I’ve assembled while visiting Vancouver. By the way, this visit has been the best so far. Just the right balance of old friends and family. I really miss my family while living in Toronto. It’s definitely not a reason to move back to Vancouver, just to visit more, or as the busy life allows me.

I cooked my first ever roast beef on Christmas Eve. Us Europeans celebrate the real holiday on the Eve of Christmas as opposed to on the day itself (I find I’m always royally spent by the time it’s the evening of December 25th anyway). The roast beef idea was inspired by Colleen who cooked a great one for me. Below is my 2.6kg creation, succulent, fragrant and utterly decadent:

For Christmas dinner I decided to take over the protein reins and assembled a chorizo, lemon, herbs stuffed turkey breast. Mom and I wrestled with the poor bird (who probably had a violent enough existence on the factory farms somewhere in the US), tied it up and sent to the oven for cooking. 1 hour and 2o mins, take note, you cooking birds.

Below is the colorcrossed and bound turkey before the oven transformation. And the untouched finished version. All guests ate their pieces. The turkey was accompanied by Roman potatoes, by the way. Finely sliced potatoes that you bake for 30 mins, then pour 14 oz of diced tomatoes with sauce over it, add basil, zaatar, sea salt and pepper and some sparse tomato slices on top. Bake for 30 more minutes, or until ready.

Now that I feel confident that I can cook any kind of meat, under the pressure of holidays, I’m really set in the kitchen. Big thanks to mom for letting me use the kitchen and trusting me enough with the big meats

Christmas dinner spread. First half was created by me (hors d’oeuvres mostly), Russian salads were my mom’s specialty.

Big City Small City

We were talking about there perceived friendliness of people in various cities that we have both been to. And I often try to notice patterns in systems or in modes of human interaction; I’m interested in how people form clusters and what makes them tick, what makes some people enter the hubs/communities, what makes them leave and the like. I guess It seems that the smaller a city is, the less likely the people are to connect with outsiders, or welcome a newbie into their clique.

My friend moved to Vancouver ages ago, and spent over a year there. He noted that despite having no problem finding one-time hookups, real friendships didn’t really blossom. Another friend went west recently and had East coast-hating vitriol spit on him by those who never even visited Toronto. I return now and, besides enjoying and nurturing my established circle of old friends, have not a single time even had an opportunity to randomly meet a person. These days here I/we meet a new person almost every night. Or I have no problem talking to people, and they’re friendly. Bigger cities with their bigger ponds possibly mean that there is always more fish out there? Or you will never see that person again, why not try your best now? Or practice makes better, especially when you’re in a megalopolis?

In New York I have strangers come up and talk to me a lot. Montreal are a brave folk, except when they start addressing me in French which I speak 0 of, at which point I think they become turned off. Whatever the case, it got me thinking about the super small community, for example, Tiny, Ontario where I spent few nights at a friend’s cottage. Well, there was nobody to meet and socialize with in the first place Small (and I mean 1-2 million residents in a greater area is still small) communities, in my experience, tend to stay more centered on their own groups and are less open to newbies. Maybe it’s just the elitist West coast communities, I don’t know. Need to explore Europe more for a better understanding.

PS. No hate, please, these are just my opinions.

Winter Wonderland

Much like spring this year caused a surge of excitement and eagerness, winter’s appeal is growing too. I’ve always loved  snow and holidays, always highly anticipated as the break between school, sleeping in, reading in bed, snow angels and making elaborate snow men. But this year something special is happening. I’m really excited about winter, despite the irritating cold it will bring with it.

I don’t ski or snowboard, so sporty frolicking in the snow is not really an option (BUT I am willing to learn how to snowboard if anyone is going). To me winter means: snow, Christmas, red Starbucks cups, snuggling in bed, dinner parties, movie nights, winter beer (Innis & Gunn ftw), presents, going to Vancouver to see family, Bugs Tomato in a ridiculous Santa outfit, high school friends and old faces, sleepy snowy evenings, reading annual summaries (this year will be full of celebrity deaths and other craziness), writing my own summaries, setting goals, finding ways to accessorize that boring sweater, spending more time in the gym, plowing through the bookshelves, writing, cooking, spending more time at neighbors’, pomegranates, mandarins, way too much napping, frenzied dancing and more…

This year I don’t have any pressing exams, 8am classes this year, or all-weekend study sessions planned this year. I get to fully enjoy my cup of tea, the snow dance, the clean and white streets. I await the winter in its truest, most elegant, least overwhelming manifestation.

Canadian Street Naming

Canadian cities oftentimes include street names that cover provinces, trees, (always) Broadway and various British historical figures. During my last trip to Vancouver, when I was looking up a way to get to my friend’s place, I found this curious little item: between Main and Cambie streets there are a bunch of successive streets named after Canadian provinces. From East to West they go: Quebec Street, Ontario Street, Manitoba, Columbia (presumably British Columbia), Alberta Street and Yukon. Everything is swell and sound until we realize that Alberta and (British) Columbia should’ve switched places. Someone must have done poorly in geography class, or simply tried to be cheeky. Either way, a fun fact about Vancouver.

We Got 5 Years

5 years ago, when I was 17 and about to finish high school – first let me tell you, it was an exciting time because I was a genius in History 12, secured two hot career preparation program placements, got into the university of my choice, had a rockstar boyfriend, grand plans, read the some of the most influential books and was just so happy to reach the peak of my teenage days, – I wrote a collection of prose poetry a la Dreamtigers (you can read parts right here!).

Called From A Dreamtiger, with its mantelpiece is My Baby Krishna (the pictured object on the left), the collection centers on my perceptions of colors, relationships between numbers, memories of friends of the past, and travels. I was really proud of it because it was my first non-childish collection of pieces that really channeled . My writing instructors liked them, as well as MFA writing candidates that I used to talk to a lot. Back then I used to say that every five years I feel like writing about things from the past, and I will probably write about 2004 five years down the road.

In the past month I started to recall more and more little and big things from roughly 5 years ago – events, details, light, people, words exchanged. I remember the walks to the theatre in the falling snow, picnics in the forest, writing papers on the horrors of The Satyricon, frantically trying to comprehend the stock market in a race to win, Spanish visitors, multiple bars in Vancouver with equally multiple sins and vices, music and music and music, the film and modeling, bright future, eternal union, new member of the family, utter confusion borne out of fear of loss and changes, and more and more, expressed in frail and sensitive terms.

I feel the coming of the second chapter of my recollections, which I will add to the first and start looking for publishing opportunities.

Top 10 Parties Of All Time

at Space, 2008

I present to you my favorite parties of the past 5 years (since that’s when I started dipping into the scene). The type of an event you talk about for weeks after, revel in the photos/videos and wish you could do it over & over again.

1. Carl Cox at Space, Ibiza, Spain, August 2008. Function 1 sound system, tons of happy people everywhere, amazing beats, all in the legendary Ibiza! I don’t need to describe too much.

2. Egyptrixx, Alias et al. at the Palms Out Sounds CMJ showcase, New York, 2008. Not only the quest of getting there with friends was a blast, but the non-stop heavy beat danceathon till 4am was a pleasant way to kill the October night. Oh yes, it ended with a breakfast at 5am.

3. Housemeister & Modeselektor at Igloofest, Montreal, January 2009. It was an amazing outdoor experience in January at -15C, complete with running into Vancouver acquiantances and dancing with a giant pink rabbit, as well as videotaping the fun, falling in love with techno for the n-th time and bartending comrades.

1. 

   Watergate, Berlin. 5am

4. Tresor and Watergate, Berlin, August 2008. Both of these parties are at par and happened few days apart. Tresor “never sleeps”, and is a scary former power plant – I clearly remember walking in the basement towards utter darkness, but towards the heavy sounds of techno, knowing I was certainly walking to a right place. Watergate was a blast with Krystel & Gerald with sunrise on the canal, and random guys from Chicago gifting us roses.

5. Richie Hawtin aka Plastikman, Vancouver, October 2005. I went by myself and met a million people, got a pass to get on stage and had Richie’s aunt (!) videotape me dancing. I also drank her champagne and ended up at the afterparty where Richie spun. Pretty random and advanced for Vancouver town.

6. My 20th birthday party, Vancouver, July 2006. It started with the longest Japanese Izakaya dinner with friends – first came the squares, then mid-funsters, then rockstars. We ended up at Shine night club and I told Paul Devro that it was my birthday and that I bought the dress I was wearing earlier that day at Dadabase, so he gave me a bunch of drink tickets. 6am bed times after whole lotta fun with close friends.

7. Ellen Allien, Mod Club, Toronto, September 2006. “Last night a DJ saved my life” is exactly how I felt about that night. I’ve been in love with Ellen for few years then, and seeing her few feet apart was unbelievable. Plus, I met an amazing dance team and made new friends in a city I just moved to!

8. Black Ghosts, Wrongbar, Toronto, July 2008. I was extremely tired that evening, but Egyptrixx and Alias dragged me out to an amazing show. I was impressed with live singing and mixing, old beats and crazy rave tunes. Even though I never been to a rave, I felt like I did that time. Great workout, too.

9.Bodyheat party, San Francisco, June 2007. My friend Logan threw a lot of Bodyheat parties back in 2007. We drove from Los Angeles that night. Arriving at 3am, we hopped in just in time for super drunk people to depart and diehards to kick it.

10. Running amok with Michael Leyton, San Francisco, December 2005. The first time we met, we went to a BYOB Mangosteen place, then went to Japantown and stole an American flag after some drinks, explored SF in a car, then I persuaded my way into some cheesy club (being underage), where we danced hardcore to 80′s rock music, screaming “We want techno!” It ended with Michael crashing his car.

why hello

Originally uploaded by dreamtiger

this is from such a long time ago! well, well…. 2004. I remember, those were the days. Summer after we graduated from high school, the days before university, texting my boyfriend at the time (finance engineer guy, heh), we just spent the afternoon shooting 35 mm and speculating about the future. The sun shone brightly, the belt felt heavy, we felt the lightness in our stomachs and were so full of optimism… Speaking of, the positivity is even higher now.