A Busy Saturday

9:45 AM — Apple Store Opening

We got to Pacific Cen­tre Mall at about 9:30. There were about 50 peo­ple ahead of us in line. I found out later from John Biehler that the first guy in line had got­ten there at 5:45 AM. After about 20 min­utes, the line grew behind us to the end of the cor­ner of Granville and West Geor­gia. After another few min­utes, we moved in to the vestibule (before you get into the Mall, and waited another half our or so. Peri­od­i­cally, the Apple Store Staff, most of the young and about 75% of them guys, would come out and take pic­tures of the crowd, video them, (inter­view them in a few cases), and high-five them as they ran out. Finally, at right about 10:05, we were let in:

The staff were now in the store, and a line of them screamed and high-fived us as walked in the store, which was already packed. We each were given T-Shirts (very attrac­tive black ones with Pacific Cen­tre and the Apple Logo in small let­ters on the front). By com­par­i­son, the at the Apple Store open­ing in Boston years ago, the far more restrained East Coast New Eng­land staff merely applauded as we entered; there was no scream­ing or high-fiving.

We looked around and saw a lot of nice mer­chan­dise (noth­ing par­tic­u­larly extra­or­di­nary, though), talked to a few peo­ple in the crowds, and then headed out. It was fun to be part of the open­ing, but really, it was another Apple Store, and would cer­tainly be a place that I visit many times in the future, so there was no need to pur­chase some­thing in the throngs of peo­ple there. Some­times the best part of an event is being able to say you were there. Besides, we had our next event to go to!

11:00 AM — Eat! Van­cou­ver at BC Place

These pho­tos are of the Bar­be­cue Teams out­side BC Place. Inside, we walked the aisles of the biggest food show in Canada. Your entrance fee is more than made up for in free sam­ples to eat and take home, coupons, recipe books, bags and other good­ies. Suf­fice it to say that we didn’t need to get lunch, and prob­a­bly will have a light din­ner as well. We also got lots of other free stuff, includ­ing razors, tooth­paste, and tote bags. I always have fun at this show, and this year was no excep­tion. Last year, the big product-type that every­one was push­ing were all sorts of bev­er­ages. While there was still a lot of that this year, I’d have to say the big new addi­tion was a lot more cur­ries. Coconut curry was all the rage, and we must have tasted it at 3 or 4 dif­fer­ent booths. Given the ris­ing pop­u­la­tion of Asian immi­grants in this town, it’s not all that sur­pris­ing, but it’s mak­ing a good show even bet­ter, with more travel booths, more small fam­ily booths sell­ing sauces and spice col­lec­tions, and quite a few new ven­dors from Alberta and Man­i­toba. Canada’s ‘Queen of Maple’, Tracy Moore from Ontario was there, pro­vid­ing sam­ples of some of the 77 prod­ucts that she had cre­ated. (check out everythingmaple.com to see some of them).

We’re home now (and pooped!) Rather than hear Dame Eve­lyn Glen­nie (the famous deaf per­cus­sion­ist — yes, you read that right) play with the VSO tonight, I think we’ll try and go on Mon­day night.