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.