Calgary Exchange

View of the skating rink from Calgary Tower

This is the truck that rents out the skates. The guy on the right is returning his skates.

For some reason, its much harder to skate here. Maybe the skates are lousy, or the rink not as good, but I find it very hard to balance here. Of course, I am a noob at skating also.

Still, noobie me managed to "coach" MZ and SY until they quite pro, at least can stand up, haha
Theres a skating rink in the University, maybe I will train there and become a pro skater!

Wanted to go to the pubs to celebrate NYE, but it had been a busy and tiring day so we decided to go back and celebrate in the comforts of our home, just like the Canadians. There's a pizza parlour near our place, so we bought a Hawaiian Pizza there and some chicken wings.

The coke was bought long ago in Coop, for only 99cents! As we don't have enough cups, SY drank from her bowl. The food sucked :p

I guess they simply celebrate at home (can smell barbeques while walking home that night) or go to pubs for a drink (intended to go 17th Ave to take a look but in the end decided not to).

At downtown, we took a look at the "famous" Calgary Tower.

Not very tall, 525 feet. In fact, there's a building across from the tower which is taller! But I think this building has significant history, since its used as a torch for the 1988 Olympic Games. Well, it appears that the interesting thing in Calgary is its history. Presently, there's nothing really special about it.

MZ and SY seem very happy about being on top of the tower though. Non-stop photo taking from them. (Actually, I believe I took more photos than them, I even so boliao as to take their pictures :p)

Brave me sticks my body out of the tower. A little bit more and down I fall.

After that, we walked to Chinatown. Actually, its quite small, nothing much to see also. Most people are inside the shopping centres (There are 2 big ones) and they are mostly Chinese and Vietnamese.
Far East Shopping Centre has a branch in Canada.

Had lunch there, but theres nothing special. Not nice, and expensive, as is all the food we had eaten so far.

This house is the back of my house. Yea, poorly taken shot, but cold mah, hee





There's another Safeway here. This one is much bigger than the one in Brentwood. The corn flakes are much bigger too. I think I will be eating cornflakes for breakfast all the way liao. Cause they are quite cheap, especially if I buy the JUMBO pack such as the one SY was carrying. Its 1.3kg lor. 1.3kg of cereals is no joke.

Anyway, noticed that a good indication of whether a shop is suitable for poor Asians like me, is to see if there are any poor Asians/Blacks inside or not. And the Sears here is full of Asians and Blacks. Nice!

Found a table ice hockey in Sears. No foozball tables here, their national sport is ice hockey! Soccer what?

Sears is so big that there is a need for 2 storeys. The people here are really not used to high rise buildings. Saw an auntie (around 40 years of age) being scared of taking the escalator. Shes like hesitating at the edge of the escalator and when shes on it, she held on the the railing tightly.

And she's not the only one. The next day, I saw another middle aged woman hesitating at another escalator in Downtown Calgary. Never knew that in this modern era, there are still people who are afraid of escalators.

Its our first day out, and we were freezing to death! Still, its very beautiful and the sights are enough to keep me going!

At last, after walking for around 15 min, we saw signs of shops. Their malls are super big, and usually only single-storeyed. This also means that we need to walk a lot. If there are many storeys, we can take the elevator/escalator to our desired levels. Here, we will need to walk.

There are 3 megamalls in Brentwood. They are London Drugs, Safeway and Coop. Safeway is the recommended supermarket to shop in for groceries. However, our impression is that Coop stuffs are cheaper, hence we bought our groceries from there. I also bought a 17 bucks pillow from Coop (the next day, found much cheaper pillows around)

For lunch, we had buffet at this Chinese restaurant. Its 8.50, but after taxes, it adds up to 10 bucks. Still, its quite cheap since most meals in Calgary are around 10 bucks. Sigh, the food sucks, when it claims to be the best in Canada. Extremely salty, dunno whether its salt or msg. Maybe its just the buffet standard not that good, the ala carte stuffs might be nicer, but too ex for me to try.

For dinner, we cooked pasta with alfredo sauce. Delicious and cheap! Actually, MZ and SY cooked, I just ate. Yeah, my cooking skills suck. But don't say I live off them, I am their scout (map reader/pathfinder) lor. I think we will get lost sooner or later =P