Today I went to Whistler again. Yes, two days in a row. Quite a record. This time I went to ski instead of snowmobile. Best of all, I don’t have drive. I can get a ride from a friend at work. We have a very small group today, just three of us and some friends of my friend from Seattle. The snow condition is ok, but not as good as last week. There is no new snow fall in this week, therefore the snow is high packed. My friends are hard-core skier. We had quite a few black diamond runs today. In the one of the run, I am completely whited out. My flys all over the place and slided down in 360 for at least a hundred meters. Fortunately, I didn’t look too bad since my friend share the same fate with me. It is a good day of fun, althought my skill is getting better, I have to work more on my strength. At near the end of the day, I know I should be able to do those runs, but I lack the strength to bounce around the bumps.

Today it is the tape out party of my project. The whole team went into Whistler to play snowmobile. We gathered early in the morning at the office, then waited for the bus to pick us up. On my way there, I fell asleep half the way. Althought the bus came late, we were able to arrive on time for our scheduled slot. The snowmobile trail is quite far away from the ski area, it is located in a different mountain. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to ride a fast snowmobile nor joined the group went to terran park doing jumps. All my group did is driving in the trails back and forth. The guide slows down too much and I can’t full throttle the gas often. On average our group goes about 30-40km per her, while the fast group goes up to 60km per her. The highlight of the day is racing on a frozen lake, able to drive up to 60km/hr, but we only did it once. Overall, it is a good experience, but it could be better. Before we head back to Vancouver, we went to pub and have some beers and nachos. I am half drunk before going on the bus and have one more beer on the way. We had lots of fun on the bus ride. We played poker using candies as chips and Calvin bought a karaoke machine! Oh well, everyone have to sing and take turns torture the rest of the team. Some of us went to dinner together after the event, too bad that the dinner is not covered by the company. The snowmobile trip including lunch, bus ride and beer cost over $200 per head. It is definitely the best tape-out party I had in PMC.

This is the time of the Winter Olympics games. The game has been on going for 6 days, I just watched it the first time today. It is a hockey game of Canada against German and we won five to one. I didn’t watch the game intentionally. It is just happen to be my friends wanted to watch the game and pick a restaurant with big screen TV to have lunch. I am not very fond of watching sports events in general. It is fun to watch the team you can associated with occasionally. But I don’t see the reason to follow the game statistics. Those are temporal knowledge that changes every year and other than as chit-chat topics among guys, it is absolutely useless. I would like to know more about the psychology of a sports fans.

Today during lunch time, the driver has to stop by BCAA on our way back to office. He said it would only take a moment and left the key with us. It ended up so long that we were tempted to drive away his car. While we were waiting, someone started the topic on what do I think what I will be in 10 years, as well as what other people will be in 10 years. I am turning 30 this year, and I will be 40 in ten years. I have a few versions of my future but none is solidified at this point. One thing I am sure is I will be married and have kids. I also made comments on other people went to lunch. One of them is a girl, and my standard prediction is she will be married and have kids. Isn’t that prediction suitable for all girls? The other one will have a stable life, if PMC didn’t go bankrupt, he will probably stay in this company. The remaining one is a bit tricky since he is always single. I joked about he will become a priest. It is not impossible if I can convince him come to the church camp this year and renew his spiritual growth. The only problem I am not very convincing talking about spirituality. I can only attract him to come with Pat’s single friends in church. Maybe when the camp has some invitation material, I will try him again.

Every year around this time, I have to headache about buying Valentine’s day gift for Pat. I went to Metrotown after work today to do the shopping. I found I have early symton of shopping-phobia. I feel uncomfortable walking into a shop without knowing exactly what I want to buy. In particular, I am afraid to buy anything involves subjective judgement. Luckily I came across something I think Pat would like and solved my problem. On my way out, I spotted the Footlocker next to T&T has this year’s model Nike ACG hiking boot on sales. I have been wearing this series for many years, this will be my sixth pair. So even the boot I am wearing now is not broken, I can buy an extra pair as reserve.