Trip to BC Interior – 2013 (Part 2)

Here’s Pemberton Museum in Pemberton where we continued our lunch. Pemberton, located just north of Whistler, is famous for its virus free seed potato industry. It developed the first commercial virus free seed potatoes in North America in 1966. Before highway 99 was built in mid 1960’s, the only way to access Pemberton was by foot, horse or train.

Here’s the brief history of Pemberton. After that, let’s visit the first house there …

The natives, including Lil’wat, are very skillful in making beautiful baskets such as weavers of Cedar root, Inner Cedar Bark and Pine Needle basketry.

Just an example of how a house looked like back in late 1800’s or early 1900’s. This house is located in Pemberton Heritage Museum. It was similar to Burnaby Village Museum where heritage buildings are exhibited.

According to its brochure, the unique isolation offered by the mountain ranges surrounding the Pemberton Valley allows for the control of fungi, bacteria and viruses that cause potato diseases.

We could see the mountains behind this museum.

An example of a classroom of an elementary school in history. One of the pictures I included here was taken at Pemberton Meadow School in 1941.

Compared to Seaforth School in Burnaby Village Museum, they both have an apple on the teacher’s desk. What did it represent? Sorry no idea. Also both have ink bottles on students desks, remember ballpoint pens were not common until 1960s.

Trip to BC Interior – 2013 (Part 1)

I’ve been planning to write about my summer trip to BC Interior but something has always been bothering me in the past. Let’s put all the matters aside and try to recall my beautiful, meaningful trip this summer. My note for the trip is lost so I can only write based on my memory.

British Columbia, my home and native land, is full of beautiful natures. I have lived in BC for more than two decades but never had a real chance to explore its pure scenery until I joined Green Club which is organized by Joseph Lin, a retired pediatrician and family doctor from Taiwan. It was a worthy 2-day eco-tour on June 29-30, 2013 starting from Vancouver all the way to Lillooet, about 250 km one-way.

In the early morning of June 29 after everybody had been picked up, our 25 passenger bus was driving through Sea-to-Sky Highway. The bus was completely full and I was the only one from Hong Kong while the others were mainly from Taiwan. It was my first time joining a tour by myself and luckily most people were very nice and friendly.

On the highway, our driver turned on some relaxing pure music which was very enjoyable. I never had this special experience before – listening to spa music while watching the sea and mountains on a sunny peaceful day. It really healed and brightened my soul.

After we stopped at Shannon Falls Park for a very short while to allow everybody to go to washroom, we continued our trip to Green Lake where we could see different mountains including glacier. We could also see Olympic Village across the lake.

Next stop was Nairn Falls Provinical Park, a mixed forest of Douglas-fir, western red cedar, western hemlock and paper birch. The walking trail to Nairn Falls is in a very special shape since it represents the ancestral route of the Lil’wat Nation as it was long a spiritual site for the Lil’wat Nation. Lil’wat was one of the Four Host First Nations for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics.

Our leader, Joseph who is also the organizer of Green Club, was very well-prepared and knowledgeable about the forest. He told us a lot about this Park while we were walking on the trail toward Nairn Falls. I didn’t remember all the details, or maybe I didn’t get everything he said since it was in Mandarin. When he mentioned about “pine tree” 松樹, I almost interpreted it as 嵩樹 or 兇樹 “fierce tree”.

One interesting fact he pointed out was a type of insect that would create foam on the stem. I believe it is called spittlebug (or froghopper) and it is encased in foam for protection.

Here is the amazing Nairn Falls which shows example of water erosion in the pothole that have been created in the rocks.

The area was very different 150 million years ago in which it was near the shore of an ocean. The surface movement crushed nearby volcanic islands against the shoreline, and further movements changed this area from seashore to a mountainous area.

In order to get closer to the waterfall, I walked downhill which was kind of slippery for me. That’s why I was holding the wire fence when I went uphill. Joseph saw it and said I could hold trees instead, at the moment I felt I was like a criminal trying to escape but being discovered.

View of Nairn Falls from downhill. I could hear the strong sound of this powerful water moving continuously into the Green River.

At noon, we were supposed to have lunch in this park. While I had a chance to talk to others and answered their curious questions (they didn’t expect a Hong Kong girl would join this tour alone), we were informed that a small plane and a glider (滑翔機) crashed together above the river in Nairn Falls Provincial Parks. Police asked everybody to evacuate since empty space was needed for the emergency.

Finally it was decided that we should head to our next destination Pemberton and continued our lunch there …

Let Everything Be Gone With The Wind

Today, the snowy day, my hands are cold, my heart feels cold. Temperature can be below 0 °C and the day is very short, most of the time in the dark.

As Kenny Bee (B哥哥) said, hope all the unhappiness is gone with the wind, just like his song. Wish everything will be happy and smooth afterwards to everyone.

鍾鎮濤 - 讓一切隨風 (Let everything be gone with the wind)

Wind wind wind, cold wind in my heart, blows away my dreams
The matter hasn't passed, is already lost, in this moment the heart is painful
In my heart, everything is empty, night or day is like a dream
Confusion, fills my heart, pursuit of a cold wind

All kinds of emptiness, cold cold cold, blowing dreams in the wind
In the past, my heart was hot as fire, today it is already frozen
In memory, suddenly is a pain, as emptiness is mocking
You are like north wind, blowing away my dreams, just let everything be gone with the wind

Have I Taught You Before?

My department had a nice welcome back party on last Thursday! Its purpose was to give people in our department an opportunity to meet each other, especially those that are new! By encouraging them to meet new friends, each person had to write down the name of another person on the drink ticket. One of our rare guests, Emina who has been an instructor at UBC for a long time, was so excited to meet a graduate student named Mina. It was quite a coincident that their names (Mina-Emina) are so similar… Another excitement for her in the party was … to know me better! Haha!

I’ve been working at UBC for more than 8 years but never had a chance to spend time chatting with Emina since she seldom visits our office (that’s why I called her rare guest). In the party, she suddenly asked me “Were you an undergrad student at UBC?”
“Yes” I replied.
“Were you in Commerce?”
“No, I was in Agricultural Sciences.”
Then she told me that she was teaching courses in both Commerce and Agricultural Economics so it’s very possible that I was her student. Bingo! It reminded me that I was her student around 1996-1998 while she was teaching Math Economics and Matrix, etc.

What a coincidence! She is the second instructor saying that she had taught me before. The other instructor was called Dr. McArthur which I had mentioned in my blog more than 4 years ago J

South East Asia Cruise in December 2012 (Part 5)

On December 7, we returned to Singapore in the morning and departed from the cruise around 8 am. We spent about 4 hours in Singapore before we took our flight back to Hong Kong.

We met our taxi driver on December 3 who drove us from the airport to Marina Bay Cruise Centre. He offered to drive us around for sightseeing on December 7 before we went to the airport. He was friendly and talkative with Singapore-style Cantonese, telling us which part of Singapore was from reclamation, Marina Bay would look much better when all the constructions are done in 2015, and how people competed in building high rises. He also told us a bit about how Singapore was affected in WWII, originally Singapore was safe and undiscovered until Malaysia informed Japan the location of Singapore which was the cause of massacre. Even babies were killed by putting poison to their mouths.

As recommended by the taxi driver, we first visited a very new park called Gardens by the Bay (濱海灣花園). It was constructed on the reclaimed land. I found this garden very spacious and modern-designed.

I really like the photo on the left since somehow I feel it looks like the aboriginal design in North America!

I think this is Cloud Forest at Gardens by the Bay where special plants and waterfall can be viewed. Since admission wasn’t free and due to time constraint, I only took some photos from outside.

On the way to next destination, I saw this elegant hotel which was built in 1887.

Since merlion is the icon of Singapore, I was very excited to see the real merlion statues 魚尾獅 in Merlion Park 魚尾獅公園!

left photo – baby merlion, right photo – mother merlion

What a nice weather, but very hot though! Let’s make a pose beside the big alphabets (擺番個靚pose先) J

We would like to try the famous Hainanese chicken (海南雞飯) in Singpore so our driver dropped us off at Boon Tong Kee (文東記), one of the famous restaurants for Hainanese chicken with reasonable price. The dish tasted quite good except that they didn’t give us the boneless chicken as requested since we were foreign visitor. Overall, food was good J but service was bad L

After lunch we headed to the airport. I saw many interesting architectures on the way and this was one of them –historical style with doors on second floor facing the street. If I’m not mistaken, the doors were for the purpose of delivering furniture in the old days since I have seen a building with this kind of structure in Vancouver Chinatown.