London: Tower of London, Tower Bridge

The following are pictures I had taken when I went to London during the Remembrance Day holiday weekend while I was still a Canadian salaryman. Taking a holiday during the Remembrance Day holiday = taking 4 vacation days while getting 10 holiday days back in return.

I started posting pictures from my 2009 London trip before I got interrupted by going to the internship in Tokyo so this post continues from the previous two that I did.

London: Remembrance Day Parade

Visiting Windsor Castle

The pictures are all from Nov. 10, 2009 when I went to visit the Tower of London and Tower Bridge. Unfortunately as with all paid attractions in the United Kingdom you are not allowed to take any pictures inside the buildings. As with everything in the U.K., everything is bloody expensive, the admission tickets per person were about £20 ~ $32 CDN.

The Tower of London, from the outside, you can see that the moat was filled in long ago and replaced with grass.

Visiting Windsor Castle

On Nov. 9, 2009, after one day in London we took the train from Paddington Station and the whole journey took about 40 minutes. We had to take an intercity train to Slough and then change for a local train to Windsor. Our purpose of coming to Windsor was to visit Windsor Castle.

Intercity train at Slough Station. Whats interesting is that fast intercity trains regularly passed through this station at high speeds, maybe 120+ km/h, which I don't think is quite safe...

London: Remembrance Day Parade

Almost 2 years after my trip to London, I am finally making a blog post.

On November 2009, while I was still employed at my previous company, I took one week off to visit London with my mom, taking advantage of the Remembrance Day holiday. Because of this, I used 4 vacation days into a 9 day holiday (5 weekdays, 4 days on the weekend). We took a British Airways flight+hotel package and it was quite cheap, around $1500 for one person.

The flight departed from Vancouver on November 6, 2009 at 8:45 pm and arrived at London at 1:55 pm.

The post shows our activities from November 8-9, 2009.

Approaching London's Heathrow airport.

New Intel Core i5 750 Computer System

On December 25, 2009, Christmas Day of last year I ordered parts for a new computer system. I bought the parts from a local retailer and because I paid with PayPal (I had money left over in my account from an eBay sale) the parts had to be shipped via the courier service and therefore I only received the parts in the middle of January.



Originally I did not plan to build a new computer system as I was satisfied with my 2006 era Pentium D system with 2 GB of ram and integrated graphics. However because my Pentium D system could not playback high definition video cards without stuttering, I decided to upgrade my Pentium D system with a new external ATI Radeon 4670 PCI Express video card.

Canada Line Opening

On Monday, August 17, 2009, the Canada Line rapid transit project finally opened to the public after 4 years of construction and 3 months ahead of schedule.

I don't know why they choose to have the grand opening on a Monday (these kinds of grand infrastructure projects are usually open to the public on the weekends...) but because I had work, I unfortunately could not ride the train on the opening day. I tried going after work but the lines were just too crazy.

Instead after dinner I went biking down Cambie St. and across the Canada Line bridge to Richmond. While biking I passed by many stations and they were all packed with people. I had never seen Cambie St. so alive with pedestrians before!

Below are pictures of the craziness that ensued on opening day when an estimated 100,000 people rode the train from 1 pm to 9 pm.

(Note: The pictures are not mine and are from various sources)

Our illustrious leader, the one who knows best, Premier Gordon Campbell opening the system at the YVR-Airport station.

Club Nintendo Hanafuda Cards

Today I finally received by Nintendo-branded Hanafuda Cards from the Club Nintendo loyalty program.

It cost me 800 coins to "earn" this reward. For reference, the purchase of a new Wii game gives you 50 coins. I was lucky that Nintendo lets customers retroactively collect coins from before the Club Nintendo loyalty program launch or else I would have needed to buy 16 Wii games just to earn 800 coins. The cards are technically worth a whopping $800 (800 coins x Wii game/50 coins x $50/Wii game = $800).

I thought the cards would be made of cheap cardboard but they are actually made of plastic. Either way its a great collector's item.

Golden Ears Bridge Opening

On June 15, 2009, the Golden Ears Bridge had a public opening where people could walk across the bridge. The bridge had been in construction since 2006, for 3 years.

This was the first new bridge to be built in the Vancouver area since the Alex Fraser Bridge back in 1986. An interesting aspect is that the bridge was built using the public-private-partnership financing model that was lead not by the provincial government, but by TransLink, the local public transportation authority.

When we got there, we parked at the parking lot of a movie theatre and boarded free shuttle buses to the bridge.

It took 30 minutes to walk across the bridge and another 30 minutes to walk back across.

Canada Line Technical Tour

Today I had the opportunity to ride the Canada Line as part of a tour that was organized by the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of British Columbia (APEGBC).

We started at 12:00 pm at Waterfront Station and we rode the train from Waterfront to the YVR-Airport station. Although the train stopped at a couple of stations, we did not have the opportunity to explore any of the stations other than the Waterfront station where we first boarded the train.

Once the train arrived at the airport, it just backed out and we were on our way back towards downtown.

One observation that I had was that the trains were really quiet and smooth (at least compared to the existing SkyTrain cars where you can't even listen to your personal music player without turning up the volume to maximum).

Another complaint that I had was that at Waterfront station, the Canada Line station is not directly connected to the existing SkyTrain station so that means to transfer between the two lines, you would have to walk across the old train station atrium and have to exit and enter the "Fare Paid Zones" two times. This could be a potential problem when faregates are finally installed.

Other than that, it is very exciting to see a brand new underground subway system being built to places that people actually want to go to.

As someone who has followed this project from the days of the "RAV Line" back in 2002-2003 when the project was killed and resurrected by politicians twice, I can't wait until it finally opens to the public on Labour Day this year.

Canada Line Operations & Maintenance Centre Tour

Last week on May 19, 2009 I had the opportunity to visit the Canada Line (new automated rapid transit system linking Vancouver, Richmond and the airport) operations and maintenance centre.

The system has been under construction since 2005 and is scheduled to open on Labour Day (first Monday in September) Sept. 7, 2009.

The trains are all made in Korea by a subsidiary of Hyundai, the Rotem company and is not compatible with the current SkyTrain system in Vancouver. The two systems do not interconnect.

For more information please see the Canada Line Wikipedia page.

Inside one of the three maintenance bays.