Walk the Walk

When you live somewhere, it's hard for you to really play tourist in your living locale.

Usually, traveling just entails going from one place to the other-- you're not really stopping to stare at the people, observe the local sights, wander aimlessly from place to place.

Because my aunt and I were in town visiting my cousin, Liz, the three of us took a brisk stroll through the little square footage of ALL OF DOWNTOWN VANCOUVER one day. No big deal. (Tell that to my legs.)
That awesome building behind my cousin and auntie is a LIBRARY. Compare with the lovely library in my hometown:

Hmm...

It was nice to spend the day with my aunt and cousin. Liz even got to explore places she doesn't normally visits.

I learned that when I finally toured LA that us locals can really miss out on some real gems.

Gems like this beautiful Vancouver wall with a giant Heineken ad! Truly a treasure.

We really liked that wall. :) It made for great picture-taking.

After miles and miles of walking through downtown Vancouver, we finally hit our destination: the Science World (apparently, I enjoy science centers when I travel)
Post on our fabulous time getting our geek on coming soon!

One Step At A Time...

One thing I love to do when I'm traveling is go hiking. Indulging in nature is sadly a rare treat in my hometown of Los Angeles, where it's apparently more vital to sit through three hours of traffic than to trek across rolling hills.

I knew the serene Vancouver outdoors would be a perfect place to go hiking and made plans with the Vancouver Native and his bunches of friends to do the deed.

Vancouver Native groaned the first moment he heard I wanted to go hiking. Yet, he suggested the most challenging slope of all-- the Grouse Grind.

Grouse Grind was probably not the best choice for a hike to take when you want to get reconnected with old friends. My conversation with Vancouver Native (aka D), whom I haven't seen in over a year, went something like this:

Janice: huffing and puffing

"Hey (huff) D, so, uh, how ya been?"

D: (silence but not really 'cause he's huffing and puffing)

Janice: D?

D: (nods head, huffing and puffing)

(silence)

...

Eventually, everyone started trekking at their own pace. Sometimes I was in the front, sometimes, I was trailing behind.

I started thinking about my friend Michelle's post from awhile back where she noted the importance of looking at your feet in your walk in an age of looking up.

I'm a dreamer. I imagine big things for myself and for the people around me. I want to reach for the stars.

But at the same time, I need to focus on my own footsteps, one after another, on the steps of life. I need to take in the moment, knowing that sometimes I'm going to be struggling to climb another step, gasping for air. Other times, I could be on a roll, moving as fast as my legs can take me, pushing through the little boy in front of me (just kidding, I would never do that...)

At different points of my trail, I will be in proximity with different people. There were the group of boys blasting rap music on their iPhones that we took a break with at the 3/4 mark. There were the cute Asian family whose littlest boy could just barely climb over one step but was still shuffling through.

After a little over an hour (nearly two hours for *ahem some people), we made it to the top.

Look at that view.

I think only when you get here will you appreciate the entirety of the journey, the ups and the downs, the slippery rocks and the water breaks.

And even all the people who've journeyed with you.

That was a philosophical hike, huh? Don't worry, food and drinking posts coming soon!

Vancouver, Vancouver, Vancouver

You are one fine beast.

With your moody clouds...

And your quaint streets...
And your cleanliness...
And your lit nights...
And your interesting holidays (the Saturday I was there, it was "Zombie day," where hundreds of people dressed up like zombies and roamed around the streets)...

And your quirky little quirks (and once again, the moody skies)...

And your beautiful beaches (and the people who don't seem to tan)...

And... did I mention the moody skies yet? (I'm kind of in love with moody skies, if you can't tell)

I made the most out of my 3-day jaunt up north. Can't wait to share with you more stories and pictures in the next coming days!

Norcal Pt. 2: San Jose

After stopping by one part of Northern California, I made my way by train to another--San Jose, to be exact.
San Jose, woot woot! Though many of my close friends and former roommates were from this part of town, I've actually never been to San Jose before.

Luckily, I had with me, a most marvelous tour guide, the one and only Kel Banh! I tell you, people lucky enough to be in Kelly's presence, this woman is the best date-planner ever!

When I arrived, our first stop was to The Tech Museum. We unleashed our inner-geeks (which aren't really deeply-hidden) and checked out the many wonders and terrifics the museum had to offer.


This computer drew our face! Amazeballs AND a free souvenir! Can't beat that.

You just knew I had to take a picture of a double helix made out of books. (Though Kelly probably took this one. Note the awesome lighting?)


Being from UCLA's north campus, this freaks the hell out of us.

You can't see it that clearly but the blocks spell "kel & jan forever." Creepy, we know.

Then, Kelly took me jumping!

A great source of endorphins, people.

Of course, no trip to one's hometown would be complete with a jumbo meal.

In this case, a big bowl of some-vietnamese-noodle-that-is-not-pho-but-just-as-yummy!

Much love was had in the cold cold San Jose with this dear one. I really hope to go back soon. Soon! (And update this blog sooner as well. Sheesh, can't believe we're hitting April already!)

Northern Bound

I took a trip up to Northern California not-so-recently. Needed to scratch a traveling itch (and do some work) so I landed in San Francisco and Emeryville for a bit (San Jose to come later).

In typical Norcal fashion, 'twas gloomy but it surprisingly didn't rain that much while I was up there-- a few sprinkles here and there.

I ate some tasty local favorites...
These here are vegan donuts whose shop is run by some of the nicest tattoo-ed, earring-ed-out hippies I've ever laid eyes on. He even gave us free soy milk! (I know, I'm easy to please).


Yummy big breakfast.
Best part of the trip was the company I kept. Old friends from the north meant lots and lots of catching up to do!



Special thanks to homies JLo and Dat Bui for housing me, feeding me, babysitting me, tour-guiding me.

Up next: San Jose with KelBanh!

Shanghai World Expo

Did you hear about the World Expo in Shanghai, China this summer?

Neither did I. Not until I met one individual who proceeded to inform me that the World Expo is like the Olympics of the commerce world, where countries meet up in the same place once every four years to kind of revel in their own awesomeness. '

If I know of one country very eager to do that, it's China. So it was very fitting that this year's World Expo took place in the most awesome of cities - Shanghai.

As court, we had VIP privileges to the expo which included no lines! We felt so bougie. I took a really cool video of us heading into the China pavilion but my camera was retarded and fast-forwarded everything so just watch it like you're on speed.

The next pavilion we checked out was the US pavilion. No offense, but isn't the building really ugly and corporate looking? So...American. Haha, but in their defense, one of the girls explained to me that it was because the US pavilion was the only one that was privately funded. As in, our government couldn't really provide money to go into this while other countries had that fund. Tough times.

My friend Mario made a cameo in the video for the US pavilion.

Next we headed off to the Coca Cola pavilion. (My sis, Jessica would have been in heaven here).

We were inundated with tons of cool freebies like these cool souvenir tin coke bottles.
And this seemingly normal bottle of Coke...
...which actually, if opened correctly, chemically transforms into pieces of ice-so it's like you're drinking iced coke-in a bottle! Yes, I know. Minds are being blown right now.

All in all, the Coke pavilion was a whole lotta fun. Though the US pavilion was kind of lame, you have to hand it to US commercial products to do good work in entertaining us.

We next headed off to the Information and Communication pavilion where a whole bunch of my friends showed up on the big screen.

There's Jonathan...

...Nebula (playing a mom!)

and Miss Jani as a lead!

We headed home that rainy evening getting a pretty good feel of what the World Expo is all about. Despite it being incredibly good weather (cause it wasn't stifling hot) and we did not have to wait in line, I don't know if I would make a trip to another world expo in the future. If I wanted to wait in long lines and walk to far places to watch stuff, I'd rather check out Disneyland shows.

Heh, like my meh face in this picture?