Seeing Star....Bucks!!!

Have been in Vancouver for almost 4 days & everywhere I go in downtown Vancouver, I see Starbucks Coffee Cafes! Think almost one every 400m :-P Think the people here really love coffee! But... I have the privilege of drinking Starbucks coffee for free everyday :-) B'cos Starbucks coffee is being offered to participants of the conference! So I make sure that I have a cuppa every session break :-P

3rd Day in Vancouver: Early Morning "Call"

It was 4.30am... My sleep was suddenly interrupted by a "familiar" alarm. The fire alarm had gone off in my hotel!!! I was totally thrown off guard as I slept at about 2am. My colleagues and I quickly took our personal belongings and make our way to the ground floor. I was so anxious to get to safety that I wore my colleague's leather shoes by mistake :-P This is the first time we experienced a fire alarm in a hotel.

The fire engines came about 15 min later and verified that the fire alarm was falsely triggered by some faulty mechanism. Some of the hotel guests were clearly angry over the false alarm. Many beautiful dreams were interrupted, ha.

We decided not to get back to sleep but prepared ourselves for the day conference. The conference starts at Sheraton Wall Centre, 8am daily and is a short distance walk from our hotel. I have started to enjoy the sandwiches at Subway as we took our breakfast there daily. There are quite a number of Subway branches at downtown Vancouver.

Today is the 2nd day of Int'l System Safety conference (ISSC 08) and it started with a "opening ceremony". This annual conference is organised by Int'l System Safety Society which comprises of System Safety professionals, who come together for an exchange of ideas, knowledge and experiences. We were sent by our company to learn about this discipline from int'l practitioners. 5 full days of programmes; packed from 8am to 5pm.


Nevertheless, still able to squeeze in some time to experience downtown Vancouver slowly :-)

Finally! Arrival @ Vancouver

I have arrived @ Vancouver! Waited 6 hours @ Portland Int'l Airport & finally took the plane from Horizon Air (on the picture below). The weather was turning bad as you can see and the ride was real bumpy! Will never take a light aircraft again.

Upon touch-down, we quickly travel to our hotel and settle in. It was a simple and comfortable place, right at the heart of downtown Vancouver.

Went for our dinner after settling in quickly and managed to take a 2 hours walk at downtown Vancouver. Nice and cosy temperature @ 14 Degree Celsius. The sky was still quite bright until about 8pm.

We came across an interesting shop (see below) that sells Apples & Mash Mellows, dipped in chocolate & with a variety of toppings! Yumpy! One bite will definitely give me enough Calories for one whole day! Better watch my waistline :-P

Heading for Vancouver

Just touched down at Portland International Airport (now 10am, Sun morning) - after 16 hours of flight from Singapore via Narita Airport, Japan. Quite tired now... Didn't really sleep during the journey. Now, waiting for the next flight to Vancouver in 4 hours time (1 hour flight).

Will be at Vancouver for a week till 29 Aug, for a conference. This is my first trip to the States and Canada. Hope that this will be a fruitful trip :-)

Taking a good rest now....