Winter Is Over

Vancouver's winter is finally over, and I finally feel like blogging again.

First off, Emily has been doing some awesome work on the wedding front. Most of the Canadian invites have been made, and we now need to start on the Australia invites. We've also started a new blog to document the wedding details. The address is emphinity.blogspot.com, and it should have a bit more content by the time the invites arrive in mailboxes. We may end up reusing that blog for "family" stuff too, especially once we have kids and such. No, there's no children on the way yet, but there certainly will be eventually. :)

Emily's Grandma (Mak side of the family) has been visiting Vancouver for almost 3 weeks now. She's here to see the cherry blossoms and enjoy our weather. As I type this blog, she's frying up dinner in the kitchen - probably onions because my eyes are watering.

The three of us have been living at my apartment and it's been surprisingly good fun. Emily and I have learned how to play Mah Jongg (just the basics, not the complicated scoring mechanism), and we play it every few nights.

We've also rearranged my apartment in preparation for when Emily eventually moves in. The living area is now almost entirely open space, with just some vertical glass shelving on the walls, and a sofa/futon in one corner. We've hosted a couple of "small group" sessions here. That was the first really large gathering at my apartment since... well... ever. I'm not sure how to feel about that... :)

Anyway, sounds like dinner is almost ready. I need to wake Emily and see what I can help with.

Wordle Picture

This is the result of applying Wordle to my blog. I imagine that the topics will change overtime. I need to post some more stuff about snowboarding, for example. :)

Update: The results of applying to Emily's blog, and to Timothy's blog. See if you can pick which belongs to who.

Small Church Groups

Tenth Alliance Church has become a very good spiritual 'anchor' for us. Emily and I attend the second service almost every Sunday morning. At lunch, we will often critically analyse the sermon, checking for internal consistency and trying to better grasp it's meaning. As a deist I naturally emphasis logic and rational thinking, so I really enjoy these discussions. I feel that they can only strengthen Emily in her faith.

We have also joined a 'small group' as part of the church. A 'small group' is a collection of similarly-minded (ie. Christian) people who get together, once a week, to discuss issues of faith. Some small groups focus on 'worship', but thankfully our group's focus is on improved understanding of Christian faith and teachings.

We met for the first time last night. There were about 10 people in total, and we spent 2 hours discussing some surprisingly deep questions about faith. I heard a lot of very good arguments and some surprising points-of-view from everyone.

That said, Emily and I had to be careful to not dominate the discussion! We've spent a lot of time discussing 'faith', so our (sometimes opposing!) answers came to us very easily. There were some topics that I had to tiptoe around, such as whether non-Christians would go to heaven. Emily, of course, did not need to tiptoe and dove straight in. :)

At the end of the 2 hours, I spoke to the group and revealed that I was not in fact a Christian. I am primarily there to (a) stay in touch with Emily's faith and (b) to support Emily's journey by critically analysing and helping her reach conclusions. I similarly hoped to simply assist the group in their discussions. Indeed, an open and communicative group may help me reach some new conclusions of my own. I asked the group if they would be willing to accept my participation, and thankfully they all said yes.

We'll be committing to the group for Tuesday nights for the next 3 months. Small groups can be difficult sometimes, because they are much more intimate than a regular church setting. That said, I was very impressed with the people I met last night, and have a feeling this will be very good for Emily, and possibly for me. :)

P.S. I am very stuck in my deism. For those hoping that this experience will encourage me to become Christian, I am sorry but I will disappoint. ;)

Magic Kingdom

For Emily and I, the Magic Kingdom was just a (slightly poorer) clone of DisneyLand in California. But for Timothy, the Magic Kingdom was probably the highlight of the trip. There were far more 'safe' rides in this park than any other. There was also a large number of parades, shows, fireworks, and such. I'll try to describe some of the highlights:

Cars

We have been training Timothy to drive on the Wii. We even have a few steering wheel adapters for the Wii remote to make it more accessible. The local 'speedway' was an obvious ride choice.

The 'speedway' is very simple. Each car is an underpowered go-kart with oversized spring bumpers, and is constrained by a single metal rail underneath. The rail prevents you from leaving your assigned lane, but you can still steer left/right by about half-a-metre. Collisions with the car in front are discouraged, but I managed to give Emily a small 'tap' from behind almost every time. :)

If you weren't careful you would start bouncing left-right-left-right off the rail under the car. It was actually quite a challenge to drive without ever touching that rail. Timothy was actually very good at driving and his passengers always enjoyed a smooth ride. The same cannot be said for some other drivers in our group. :)

I've uploaded a number of photos of Timothy driving, along with all the other rides, so take a look. :)

Dum-Dum-Jiun

As a general rule, anything that spun around ("dum-dum-jiun" in Cantonese) was going to be an easy choice for Tim. We only had "Red Fish Blue Fish" at Universal Studios, but were spoiled for choice at Magic Kingdom with both the Dumbo ride and Aladdin's Flying Carpet. They are the same basic concept; you sit side-by-side and use joysticks to tilt, raise, or lower your carriage while the machine spins around. In the case of Aladdin's Flying Carpets, large camel statues would occasionally spit water at you. On a hot day it was just perfect.

Just a few metres away was the classic horse carousel, ensuring that Timothy never had to go too far to find another ride. At times he became known on-sight to the staff, simply because he was on these rides so often. A number of times we would ride as a whole group, but more often we would let Timothy ride on his own or with a partner. He even became quite good at mounting the horse, a rather difficult task even for me.

Now, the Orbiter ride is a special kind of dum-dum-jiun. It is placed 3 stories up in the air, spins a lot faster, and I believe goes much higher than similar rides. It's more than enough to trigger a fear of heights, if you have such a thing... Watching from the ground, Emily and I couldn't work out whether Timothy was happy or scared. Perhaps it was both. Whatever his initial impressions, Emily and Tim were more than happy to ride it again and again. :)

Tea Cups

What can I say? "You shall have no other ride before this one"? In general, our pattern was "go to ride A, go to tea cups, go to ride B, go to tea cups, ...". I've never seen Timothy so happy as he was on this one ride. And he rode it so many times...

If Emily and I ever needed to run off to a larger ride, we would leave Timothy and Stella at the tea cups because we knew he would not tire of it. During one of these times, a dog turned up while Timothy had been waiting for his turn. Now, Timothy has a mortal fear of dogs; as a rule, he will tense at the sight of a dog, and will run if it comes anywhere near him. Tea Cups is apparently an exception to this rule. Seemingly nothing will discourage Tim from this ride. And there was nothing he enjoyed more. Check out the video on the right for proof. :D

Parades

I think we managed to see every parade there was. My favourite parade, though we didn't get very close to it, would have to be the Block Party. While most of the parades are simply floats driving past, this one has a "party on wheels" atmosphere. The floats stop at regular intervals, do a show and dance, some audience interaction, and then continue on. If you really want to enjoy a parade, make sure you see this one. Mind you, if you like Eeyore like I do, you want to see the others too.

I've put a sample of parade photos up online. I even have a special album for the Karabar High School Marching Band (yes, from Queanbeyan Australia, no they weren't lost). If you'd like a link, send me an email. :)

Fireworks

We spent much of December 30th camped in the castle courtyard watching parades, but also to watch the nightly fireworks. As a bonus (planned by mastermind Emily well in advance) we also got to see the the rehearsal for the incredible New Years Eve fireworks show. As the technicians run the fireworks every night, they now have their shows down to a science. The worst bit for me was just trying to take a photo that would do it justice! I've put the good photos up as an album.

DisneyCloned

Unfortunately, the majority of Magic Kingdom is simply a clone of DisneyLand in California. Emily and I had already ridden most of the rides and, to be honest, the DisneyLand versions are better despite their age.

For example, Space Mountain at DisneyLand is an awesome, pitch black, indoor roller-coaster. At the Magic Kingdom, the whole room was faintly lit and the ride itself has been reduced to a painful mouse-trap design. At DisneyLand we rode Space Mountain at least three times, and I got a rush every time. At Magic Kingdom we rode it once, I was bored, and wanted to get back to tea cups. Other rides suffered similarly. While Magic Kingdom is great of itself, it is merely a reflection of DisneyLand.

Animal Kingdom

Animal Kingdom was a huge surprise for us. So many people tell us "you could spend half-a-day maximum", and I'm quite sure some people could do it all in half-a-day. We spent the whole day and loved it.

Real Live Animals

Animal Kingdom is the largest Disney theme park, but only because it contains a large African-themed wildlife zone. Our first ride of the day was on an open 'safari' truck to see the animals. I happen to love seeing animals of all types, so this was a real treat for me. At one point a rhinoceraus was actually walking in front of our truck, halting the ride until it moved on. At other times we could clearly see elephants, giraffes, and all manner of horned beasts. As we arrived at the park relatively early in the morning, we were able to take the safari trip twice!

Much of Animal Kingdom is devoted to walking trails and animal exhibits. There are a number of aviaries, habitats for tigers and gorillas, climbing areas for monkeys, etc. There was a whole area devoted to bats, though I was the only one of our group who actually went to see them. A number of people commented on how disgusting the bats were, but I found them quite cute.

I've posted the best of the animal photos as an album on Picasa.

Mythical Creatures

Not everything in Animal Kingdom is related to real animals though. For example, Disney has created a very cool yeti-themed roller coaster. Expedition Everest is basically a train ride up and through the mountains, sabotaged by yetis. There is a lot of very fast backwards and forwards action and was a huge amount of fun. It actually ranks as one of the better roller coasters in the world, despite never going upside down!

I have also read rumours saying that more mythical-themed rides had been planned, but thanks to budget overruns they were cancelled. The Imagineers who had worked on those rides were laid off... and were then hired by Universal to build Dueling Dragons. :D

All Done

After our experience at Universal Studios we were very careful in selecting rides for Timothy. We were a bit surprised when he chose Primal Whirl - a miniature rollercoaster ride that spins as it goes - but he seemed very confident. On the first corner our car began spinning, Timothy was thrown against me, and he was quite happy. On the second corner I was thrown against him... and he wasn't too happy with that. I had to wrap my arm around him to try and avoid further impacts.

Once we reached the top of the first hill Timothy was already saying "all done"; a code phrase that means he is finished and wants to do something else. Of course, the ride wasn't "all done" with us yet. We bolstered him by clapping and whooping after every spin or drop, attempting to convince him this was 'fun'. I honestly think he enjoyed it, but when the ride ended he repeated again "all done, all done" and quickly got out. It was incredibly cute, but more importantly we had now identified an upper-bound on the rides Timothy would enjoy. :)