At least 13 Dead in a Massive Taipo Blaze

The fires are still burning in a Taipo housing estate

***As of 10am November 27 HK time there are 44 dead, 279 missing***

Hong Kong is on edge watching fires still raging nine hours later engulfing several buildings in a housing estate in Taipo, where at least 13 people, including one firefighter died in the No. 5 blaze, the highest rating in severity. 

The residential buildings at Wang Fuk Court were covered in bamboo scaffolding when the fires broke out this afternoon after 3pm. Currently there are reports of 70 people still trapped, 200 missing. 

News reports say 128 fire trucks, 57 ambulances, 767 firefighters and 400 police officers were deployed to the scene.

According to the New York Times, a 74-year-old resident heard a firefighter pounding on his door to evacuate after 3pm, but he and his wife refused to move and it wasn't until three hours later they were rescued. 

Andy Yeung Yan-kin, Hong Kong's director of fire services said the heat was so hot inside the buildings it was difficult to rescue people.

The city's residents will not be sleeping tonight; some have brought noodles, bread and water to rescuers and victims.

This fire reminds me of the November 1996 Garley Building fire in Jordan where 41 people died, making it the worst building fire in Hong Kong in peacetime. One of the casualties was an acquaintance's brother who was a firefighter.

However, this Taipo fire may be worse at this rate.

We are all anxiously watching.

Next Level Cantonese Dining

Whole roasted piglet presented before it was chopped up

Last night we had dinner at Congee Noodle House on Broadway and Main Street. It's a Cantonese-style institution that has been open for over 20 years, though it was temporarily shut for three years from the end of January 2020, when the retaining wall at a nearby construction site collapsed during a heavy rainfall, which caused a sinkhole. As a result part of the parking lot in the back caved in and fell into the excavation pit.

Braised goose webs, fish maw and pea shoots

At the time people worried this restaurant, which mostly serves piping hot tureens of congee, fried noodles and fried rice, and other family-style dishes was closed for good.

But in May 2023 Congee Noodle House was back open, complete with renovations inside and since then has had a steady stream of business despite construction of the subway on the road right in front.

The restaurant doesn't just serve basic dishes; at the back, groups of diners in private rooms can eat classic Cantonese dishes, like whole roast piglet, stir-fried lobster with vermicelli, deep-fried shrimp meat on crab claws, steamed fish, and salt-baked chicken.

We had some of the aforementioned menu items, as well as braised goose webs with collagen-rich fish maw artfully decorated on a bed of dau miu or pea shoots, and plump sui gao or dumplings filled with shrimp, pork and vegetables with egg noodles in soup.

Caramelised eggplant is next level culinary skill

However one dish stood out -- an off-menu item -- caramelised eggplant. Much in the same vein as caramelised banana, the eggplant chunks were probably steamed and then pan-fried in sugar that was starting to turn into a caramel colour.

The end result is a slightly crunchy exterior, and soft, tender interior. Not easy to make, but boy the result was amazing.

Congee Noodle House

141 East Broadway

Vancouver, BC

604 879 8221

Beijing Memory with a Cuppa

"Forbidden City Starbucks" 2001 by Gu Xiong

At the Vancouver Public Library downtown this afternoon I spied this photograph on the eighth floor. 

It's a picture of a building in the Forbidden City where they once had a Starbucks. It's called "Forbidden City Starbucks" taken by Gu Xiong in 2001.

I remember visiting Beijing and seeing it there and thinking it was so odd seeing an American brand in the grounds where emperors used to live. Visitors could sip on cappuccinos next to the Hall of Preserving Harmony.

The Starbucks there opened in 2000, and caused a big uproar from locals and foreigners alike. Seven years later TV host Rui Chenggang penned a blog post railing about the American coffee chain in the Forbidden City, saying it "tramples over Chinese culture".

His blog post led to half a million people signing a petition to have Starbucks removed, which happened about six months later. 

He said he wasn't against Starbucks, as he did drink the brand of coffee, Rui objected to it being in the Forbidden City.

An interesting post script is that in 2014 Rui was detained on suspicion of bribery and sentenced to prison for over five years. But it wasn't until 2024 did he re-emerge, but on YouTube, which is banned in China.

Picture of the Day: Late Afternoon Light

It was still bright out at 4.15pm today

I go for walks almost daily, but today was sidetracked by other things and didn't head out until after 4pm.

It was relatively bright out after a whole morning of pouring buckets of rain, so it was nice to see blue skies and the sun.

But what a difference one hour makes!

Thanks to clocks being set back one hour a week ago, by around 5.30pm it was already getting dark!

Will remember not to set out so late anymore... winter is coming...

Window Shopping with a Glass of Wine

Sampling one of a few BC wines tonight

This evening went to Holt Renfrew downtown to a VIP event for customers to sample some BC wines from a few wineries in the Okanagan. The luxury department store stayed open for well-heeled guests to sip whites, reds, and sparkling, eat a few canapes and wander two floors in the hopes they might get a jump on their Christmas shopping.

A pair of Jellycat marshmallows 

For some reason I was drawn to the Jellycat collection, which has come out with even more niche products, other than its plush bunnies, bears and dogs.

How about a pair of pink and white marshmallows? At around $35 they might be too rich to go with your hot chocolate.

There were plushie gingerbread houses, and even a letter addressed to Santa Claus.

But it was this grey roll with eyes and a smile that was intriguing. What the heck was this supposed to be?

I had to look at the label -- it's goat cheese.

Not cheddar, brie or parmesan, goat cheese.

"Originally from the pastures of Southern France, Amuseables Goat Cheese moved to London to pursue his dreams: becoming a world renowned perfumer. A bold ambition for a cheese, perhaps, but he has the nose for it," says the Jellycat description.

How about a goat cheese plushie?

Maybe they should have given out these little furry grey rolls to go with our wines?

Picture of the Day: Clouds Not Northern Lights

Can you see the Northern Lights in the clouds?

A severe solar storm over parts of Canada and the United States was supposed to result in people being able to see the Northern Lights tonight. 

It was advised to go outside around 11pm to midnight to an area with few lights to see the Aurora Borealis through smartphones, so we bundled up and headed to the nearby park.

But when we got there and tried to take some pictures, all we saw were clouds! Earlier in the day there were clear skies, but the clouds have gathered as Vancouver is forecasted to get rain tomorrow morning...

Review: The Space Architect

Adams designed living spaces for astronauts

After watching the documentary Changing Lanes, I had a quick break eating a Japanese sausage roll (a sausage wrapped in a croissant-like fluffy, flaky pastry), I returned to VIFF to watch The Space Architect, directed by Rebecca Carpenter.

Who's the space architect? It's Constance Adams, a woman who took her skills as an architect and applied them to space, imagining how astronauts live outside of the Earth, what their lives will be like, what they would need, and how they would survive.

She got to experience zero gravity

But she was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer and contacted Carpenter, her college classmate who is a filmmaker, asking her to come film her last words.

Carpenter rushed over to Houston and filmed Adams, who by this point was quite ill, needing oxygen to help her breathe. Dressed in a green shirt and black vest, Adams looked very animated, and her nails were painted bright red.

She got a bachelors degree in social studies at Harvard, then a masters in architecture at Yale. She interned with Cesar Pelli, then went to Tokyo to work for the architectural firm Kenzo Tange, then Berlin to work for Josef Paul Kleihues.

However, the economy in Germany wasn't doing well following the fall of the Berlin Wall, and Adams returned to the US to interview for a firm in Houston. While she was there she toured NASA and thought it was so interesting she left them her resume.

Her inflatable TransHub project

They later contacted her and asked if she was still interested. She was. Lockheed Martin hired her as a consultant and she worked on various projects, though she was best known for TransHab, or Transit Habitat, an inflatable module where astronauts could live and work.

Her way of solving problems was to gather all different kinds of experts together, from engineers to psychologists to talk about various scenarios and imagine what it would be like to live in space and how that would affect design and architecture in space.

Adams says all her work with NASA isn't really about humans going into space and finding the final frontier, it's about finding ways for humans to survive on Earth with climate change happening. To find solutions, she created the Mothership project.

Towards the end of the film, it says that four days after Carpenter finished filming, Adams died at the age of 53.

We were lucky that Carpenter came to Vancouver to talk to audiences after the screening. She started by saying Adams wanted her to tell everyone to get a colonoscopy after the age of 50... if she had done so she would have detected the cancer earlier.

Then she talked about filming Adams, that she was sicker than she thought she was, and they did the best they could.

Adams when she was filmed in 2018

After filming wrapped, Carpenter didn't know what she had and let her daughter watch some raw footage; she said this woman is iconic, and that her story had to be told. Her daughter's friend said the same, and so did a film editor friend.

Then the pandemic hit and Carpenter couldn't deal with this project while isolating, finding it a depressing subject. But it seems like it was a group of women in the film industry who encouraged Carpenter to keep going, and they helped her out to eventually finish the film this year.

Adams' daughters have seen the film and say it captures their mother well, and Carpenter confirms they are doing well under the guardianship of Adams' friend.

One audience member asked Carpenter what she learned from making this film and she replied that she is so grateful for every moment, sharing the moment of being with us, being thankful for everything... it seemed like she basically meant that she was grateful to be alive.

Adams accomplished so much in her short time on Earth, and we need to remember trailblazers like her, and be inspired by her great ambitions for all of us.

The Space Architect

Directed by Rebecca Carpenter

40 minutes

Review: Changing Lanes

Changing Lanes looks at how to make streets safer

The Architecture & Design Film Festival was on this week and I caught two documentaries back to back. Most of the audience at the VIFF were architects, low key but cool dressing, talking shop with their colleagues in the waiting area.

The first film was Changing Lanes directed by Ben Wolf and while it's about an area in Brooklyn, New York, it applies to any neighbourhood that is fighting to make things better. Wolf notes at the beginning of the film that he made the entire documentary by hauling equipment with his bicycle.

It opens with the death of a beloved elementary school teacher who was killed in a hit-and-run accident at Greenpoint and the residents in the area as well as grassroots activists mourn his death, and also call for the street to be designed safer for pedestrians and cyclists.

Activists rally for safer streets for pedestrians

When cities first sprang into life, there were no street lights because there were horse-drawn carriages and people walked or ran. But with the advent of cars, people were getting killed trying to cross the street. 

One activist explains it's the carmakers who blamed the accidents on the pedestrians, creating the word "jaywalking" and making it a crime for people to cross the street willy nilly, when it was something they did before cars existed.

Mayor Ed Koch tried to make New York more bike friendly and turned 6th and 7th avenues into bike lanes, but car drivers hated it and then the bike lanes were soon gone.

It wasn't until Michael Bloomberg in 2012 hired Janette Sadik-Khan as transportation commissioner did they begin bringing in bike lanes and started the Citi Bike sharing program. It also made political sense -- mayors who bring in bike lanes get re-elected again and again.

Hmmm maybe not Gregor Robertson, who got voted out of City Hall in Vancouver...

But we digress.

Numerous activists and pro-cycling people appear in Changing Lanes, most notably musician David Byrne, who is filmed riding his bike and explaining how it helps him get around the city and meet people, something he continues to do while on tour.

Byrne admits it can be dangerous cycling in NYC

There's someone who used to work at the city's transportation department, and Sadik-Khan, while activists hold rallies to get people to support their cause, but they get pushback from a businessman in the area who thinks redesigning the street will affect his business.

At first current Mayor Eric Adams is for changing the street design at Greenpoint, but then backs off; it turns out the businessman gave Adams a lot of money and was eventually indicted along with Adams.

So Changing Lanes shows that grassroots activism is important to voice your opinion, but also money can sway politicians to not necessarily do what's best for the community.

Redesigning streets, activists argue, will give people options of how they want to get around the city. Building more lanes doesn't necessarily relieve traffic james; in many cases it makes the situation worse. It was found that with more bike lanes, local businesses saw increases in customer sales because it was more accessible in terms of pedestrian and cyclists.

This is something all mayors should think about when considering how to make their cities better.

Changing Lanes

Directed by Ben Wolf

73 minutes

 

Delicious Gluten-Free Bites at Saan Saan Cafe

The other day I took my friend visiting from Toronto to eat in Vancouver's Chinatown. Well on the edge of Chinatown, dodging the homeless people along the way. 

Saan Saan Cafe has been open for over a year and it's a gluten-free cha chaan teng offering savoury and sweet items along with drinks from Hong Kong-style milk tea and yuenyeung (coffee and tea), to cocktails from Friday to Sunday.

The cafe is housed in a building that owner Eric Siu's multi-generational family lived in since 1950 when his grandparents moved in with his father and aunt.

After family members moved out, the building, which was constructed in 1904, fell into disrepair. Siu and his two siblings discussed for years what to do with the space and decided to turn it into a cafe.

It's extremely helpful that Siu is a practicing architect, though he says there was a lot more work that needed to be done, from replacing old pipes and installing new electrical wires.

The end result is a high-ceilinged space that is very welcoming and comfortable. The washrooms are also nicely decorated!

It's also helpful that Siu's siblings, Sarena is a registered dietician, and Jamie is a food scientist, to develop gluten-free items for the cafe.

The focus on gluten-free food is due to Siu's sensitivity which has resulted in him not being able to eat a lot of Chinese food in conventional restaurants; Saan Saan Cafe allows him and others to eat food they used to enjoy, or introduce it to friends or partners with celiac disease or other gluten sensitivities.

They started offering baked goods, like black sesame caramel, and pineapple coconut cookie, a mash-up between bolo bao and cocktail buns, and char siu triangle puffs. 

A few months ago they introduced a savoury menu and I finally tried them the other day.

We sampled the soy sauce chicken, which is pretty straight forward, some chopped chicken on a bed of rice. The chicken is tender, and has lots of flavour in every bite. It's a substantial portion which is good to share.

Another is curry fish balls which are usually made with gluten to give them their bouncy "QQ" texture. Here they are homemade and have more of a meatball texture. But with the delicious curry sauce and gluten-free, it's still decent and the sauce is a good way to finish off the rice in the first dish.

Our favourite has to be the prawn toast, a thick meaty chopped shrimp filling in between white bread that has been deep-fried and then sliced in half. It's slightly crunchy on the outside, and firm and slightly bouncy in the middle, and the sweetness of the prawns come through.

I had a glass of refreshing Ribena lime soda, my friend had the iced Hong Kong milk tea.

We were full by the time we finished everything and got some cookies (brown butter hojicha chocolate and pineapple coconut) to go.

Saan Saan Cafe

227 Main Street

Vancouver, BC

Sweet Sips at Sweet 7

The signature mango pomelo sago drink

There's many bubble tea shops in Metro Vancouver, and we've taken a liking to Sweet 7, which is originally from Shanghai.

Started in 2006 as a dessert shop, there are now over 1,500 Sweet 7 shops around the world, with two here, one in downtown Vancouver, the other in Richmond.

The menu is mostly drinks made in large cups. Back in the summer I ordered the signature mango pomelo sago and the portion was so large, I mixed it and poured it into bowls to share with my parents! We quite enjoyed it as a dessert.

Mango and passionfruit slush

This afternoon I took a friend visiting from Toronto to Sweet 7 downtown and she ordered that signature drink, while I tried the mango passionfruit slush.  It's fruity sweet, it's got passionfruit seeds and slushy ice, making it easy to drink and get a brain freeze.

While the menu features so many different kinds of drinks divided into various sections, to help you make up your mind faster, there are suggestions of which are the most popular drinks: other than the signature mango pomelo sago, there's Oreo cheesecake milk tea, passionfruit green tea, and matcha cheesy smoothie.

Guess that means I need to go back again!

Learning from Last Year's Fire

Fire at West 41st and Collingwood

Last August my parents and I were sitting at home about to eat dinner when we heard three big booms south of us.

I went outside to take a look and didn't see anything.

But then there were more explosion sounds and I walked down to the end of the block. From this vantage point looking south down the hill I could see a big black plume of smoke south east of us. As I walked down two blocks closer to the fire I saw giant flames beyond the tall trees. It was a frightening sight.

Saw giant black plume of smoke, fire

Later on social media there were videos of the six-storey building that was under construction was completely on fire. Another clip showed the building crane "melt" and fall away from the site, crashing onto the road. Luckily no one was there, and the fire truck had just moved away from that spot!

Then there was a commotion across the street from us -- our neighbour's roof was smouldering thanks to flying embers. The fire fighters told us to survey our roofs to see if there was any smoke. Luckily we were OK, but it was a scary lesson in how fires can easily start.

This evening three fire servicemen from the Vancouver Fire Rescue Services came to our neighbourhood meeting to talk about that fire, and two of them were on the ground fighting it.

They explained that since 2009 the City of Vancouver has allowed wood construction for six-storey buildings which was adopted in the building code. According to these fire service men, these buildings are faster to build, use sustainable material, and in this case, the rules around construction and safety were all followed before the fire. 

Unfortunately they still don't know the cause of the fire; a private investigator is working on the case for insurance purposes, but will not share their findings with the fire service...

The building was near completion, with insulation, a very light material stored on the roof -- these were the embers that flew several blocks away onto our porches and roofs causing a few fires here and there.

So when the firemen arrived, the fire was so hot, they had to wear their fire gloves right away. Luckily fire prevention materials were installed in the house next to the construction site which saved the other houses further along from bursting into flames from the sheer heat.

Embers landed at our home

Nevertheless, when they tried to fight the fire on the construction site, the water completely dissipated because the fire was so hot. They could only make sure the other houses did not catch fire and that the occupants were evacuated. No one was killed, but the crane fell onto a house, and the person happened to be in the washroom, and the crane missed him! The firefighters had to extract him from the window.

There are 21 fire stations in the city, but they were also pre-occupied with a big fire that engulfed an abandoned apartment building on East 10th. Hours later the fire near us erupted.

The VFRS called on Richmond and Burnaby to help out -- Richmond came because they are on the same radio frequency, Burnaby is on a different one. Richmond was helpful in putting out smaller fires in the area, but it showed the VFRS need to know how to deploy people when there's more than one major fire. The fire captain also admitted he had no idea how thirsty his firefighters were until they said they needed water.

VFRS learned a lot from the fire, such as the need to communicate with the public, staffing issues, and that cranes can collapse in fires, and calling for help from other jurisdictions. Early next year people with smartphones will receive messages in case you live in a certain area where there is a fire and give instructions on what to do.

As for homeowners, it's best to change from cedar shingle roofs to asphalt ones, which we just did this summer. They suggested ensuring gutters are clean, and try to keep trees a maximum height of three metres tall, or at least prune as much as possible and keep yards tidy. Firewood should not be stacked up by the house, and if there is a fire nearby, close the windows and turn on the garden hose and keep the house as wet as possible.

It was a stimulating discussion and we all learned a lot! Needless to say we thanked the three fire services men for their work in putting out the fire eventually and keeping the rest of us safe!

Picture of the Day: Pileated Woodpecker

A Pileated Woodpecker pecking at a tree

Yesterday during my walk in Pacific Spirit Park, I heard a knocking kind of noise. I looked to my left and saw a woodpecker! Specifically a Pileated woodpecker which is native to North America. 

He/she was not high up on the tree but just above my head, about a metre and a half away. Unlike the cartoon character Woody Woodpecker, who would drill a hole into a tree in seconds, this one would lean back then peck at the wood, with the chips flying, then crane his neck back, turning it left and maybe right and then his beak would chisel into the wood again.

The bird with a red trim at the top followed by black and white on its head, and the black the rest of its body, continued with its task to either create a cavity to raise its young, or try to extract insects from the tree.

Pileated woodpeckers are also known for making rectangular carvings in trees and this one did too!  

Canada Back on China's Approved Travel List

Chinese tourists like to visit Vancouver's Stanley Park

Tour companies geared towards Chinese groups are excited that Canada is back on the approved destination status list. 

Chinese tour groups stopped coming to Canada when the Covid-19 pandemic hit in 2020, and relations between China and Canada were on the rocks because of the arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou in 2018 and the subsequent detention of the two Michaels, Spavor and Kovrig.

But now that Prime Minister Mark Carney has reset relations with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, there may be some deals in the future, though critics are concerned that human rights violations are being sidelined. 

While Canada is not as large a market as the United States, China is probably keen to divide and conquer North America. Does this mean Chinese electric vehicles in Canada are in the cards? 

In the meantime, we could see the resurgence of Chinese tour groups in Canada as early as Chinese New Year, which is February 17 next year. One tour operator, Glynnis Chan of Happy Times Travel says Chinese groups usually spend six weeks in Canada, visiting places like Vancouver's Stanley Park, the Rocky Mountains and Parliament Hill in Ottawa, and easily dropping $1,300 a day.

"[Monday's] news was like a shot in the arm to the local tourism industry, and I am ready to show them the beauty of the country," she said in an interview with the Canadian Press.

Individual Chinese tourists can travel to Canada, but it's the groups that bring more visitors.

One can only imagine not only tour operators are thrilled, but also Chinese restaurants that used to cater to these tourists will surely be gearing up to welcome them and their hungry stomachs...

The Delicious Taste of Shunde Cuisine

Braised winter melon with crab roe and conpoy sauce

Shunde is a city of 3.2 million people located in between Hong Kong in the south, and Guangzhou in the north. Established during the Ming dynasty in 1452, Shunde is the birthplace of Cantonese opera, and Cantonese cuisine, making it a Unesco designated City of Gastronomy.

In general, Shunde cuisine is focused on fresh ingredients, such as fresh water fish like carp, rice, milk, such as buffalo milk, poultry like chicken and pigeon, and flowers. 

Flavourful Shunde soy sauce chicken

A restaurant in Richmond called A Bite of Shunde transports diners to the southern Chinese city with some delicious dishes that are different from Hong Kong-style Cantonese ones.

One is a soup called hand pulled fish soup, where the fresh water fish is pan-fried first. Once it's cooked, the fish meat is extracted from the bones and placed in a thick soup that includes ribbons of bean curd skin, wood ear fungus, and thinly sliced carrots.

Another soupy item is Chencun rice noodles in a deluxe chicken broth. The broth has a strong chicken taste, ensuring it hasn't been diluted much, and rice noodles soak up the flavour. It was total comfort food.

Impressive shrimp balls on silver bean sprouts

Speaking of chicken, the soy sauce chicken was also outstanding, better than the crispy chicken that is presented to the table standing upright with a pole through it. Then the staff proceeds to break the bird apart by hand which is quite unnecessary.

An interesting dish to watch cooked in front of us was steamed fresh Lingcod. It is deboned and thinly sliced and placed in a steamer and cooked in about two minutes and then dipped in soy sauce with chillis. The fish tasted sweet.

We were impressed by the flying fish caviar shrimp balls on a bed of "silver" bean sprout, where the head and tail of the bean sprouts were meticulously removed. The texture of the shrimp balls revealed the paste was made by hand chopping the shrimp, a laborious task, but the end result is a bouncy texture.

For vegetables, winter melon made an appearance in a poetically described "celebration of gold and emerald", when it is braised winter melon squares topped with a sauce of crab roe and conpoy. The presentation of the nine squares is artistic and not easy to present.

A Shunde specialty -- pan-fried milk with prawns

The test of a Shunde chef is seeing if they can make pan-fried milk. In Shunde buffalo milk is used, which is creamier, but here it's cow's milk that is mixed with egg white and it's not about stirring the mixture, but watching the heat and keeping it consistent. The end result is a fluffy milk finished with prawns. 

And Shunde cuisine isn't complete without claypot rice. Ours had various kinds of lap cheong of Chinese sausage steamed with the rice and some vegetable, and a dark soy sauce was poured into the claypot and mixed in thoroughly before being portioned out into bowls. The best part was the fan jiu, or the crispy edge of the rice.

Double-steamed milk custard

For dessert we had the well-known double steamed milk custard. Apparently in Shunde, a good one has the spoon laying on the surface of the custard, not sinking into it, which shows how thick it is. We all just lapped it up, it was so good, not too sweet.

A Bite of Shunde

4653 Garden City Road, #2215

Richmond, BC

+1 604 284 0119

https://www.instagram.com/abiteofshunde/ 

Asian Food Court Eats

Beef rendang and flaky roti at the Aberdeen Centre food court

A friend arrived from Toronto and I picked her up at Vancouver International Airport around 11am and she wanted to eat something Asian.

So we headed to the food court at Aberdeen Centre in Richmond.

On the weekdays this place is quiet, but this being a Sunday, it was busy! It wasn't too hard to find a table, but the vast majority of them were occupied.

We wandered around a bit to check out what was available and settled on sharing a northern Chinese set meal that included spring onion cake, some chive and pork dumplings, stir-fried thin slices of lamb in a slightly sweet soy sauce, and a small bowl of fake shark's fin soup (very thin vermicelli), with ribbons of bean curd skin, and wood ear mushroom.

For drinks we headed to a juice bar, where she had the drink equivalent of mango pomelo sago, while I had a combination of mango and papaya slush that was quite sweet.

Our set meal wasn't quite enough so I headed to a Malaysian stall and ordered the beef rendang. The server asked if I wanted rice or roti and chose the latter. We were not disappointed! The chunks of beef were so tender in the thick curry sauce that wasn't spicy at all. We dipped the flaky roti in there and it was delicious.

That was so filling we didn't need dessert!

Meanwhile there were more people queuing up for food and I was impressed to see practically all the stands doing decent business, with people of all ages dining here.

Heartbreaking Loss for the Toronto Blue Jays in World Series

The Dodgers won the World Series 5-4 in the 11th inning

What a heartbreaker! The Toronto Blue Jays were soooo close to winning their first World Series in 23 years and then it slipped away, letting the Los Angeles Dodgers win 5-4 and clinch their second consecutive title.

The Jays were a Cinderella team, at the bottom of the league last year, and then with more than half the team consisting of young players, they managed to end up in the World Series.

There was lots of talk abut Trey Yesavage, only 22 years old and pitching for the first time in the majors, and George Springer hitting that home run that propelled the Jays to the World Series. 

Blue Jays came a long way to the World Series

In tonight's game Bo Bichette helped put the Jays in a 3-0 lead in the third inning, but they lost the advantage as the Dodgers climbed back to make it 3-4, then it was tied at 4-4 in the 9th inning and had to keep playing until the Jays blinked in the 11th.

Blue Jays manager John Schneider fought back tears as he faced reporters in the post-game press conference.

"We had our chances. We had our chances to beat them soundly. But we didn't. And that's baseball," he said.

It's crazy because in the afternoon pundits, including those who follow the analytics, were expecting (or perhaps hoping?) the Jays would win. 

Part way through the game, superstar pitcher Shohei Ohtani ran out of gas -- perhaps from not enough rest -- and the responsibility was left to Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who had three wins in the series under his belt, making him the World Series MVP.

While the Dodgers have many top (well paid) players, the Blue Jays scraped their way to the top which makes their entry into the World Series even more remarkable. 

They gave Canadians something to rally behind and make us all proud to be... Canadian.

Halloween Trick-or-Treat Report 2025

Giant pumpkin skeleton greets trick-or-treaters

It's Halloween Night and... it was kind of dead... in a bad way.

We went to our usual haunts and the kids were very disappointed to see a lot of houses without their lights on.

Perhaps it's because it was Game 6 in the World Series, with the Toronto Blue Jays battling the Los Angeles Dodgers right when trick-or-treaters are knocking on doors for candy.

These two have waited so long...

Or the weather forecast was for heavy rain so people didn't bother to buy candy, thinking pint-sized witches, Lego men and walking pizza slices wouldn't come. No one went as a Blue Jays fan.

Maybe people's budgets are so stretched, they can't afford to shell out for bite-sized candy bars. 

Another reason might be because people have moved out of the area, though could there have been so many who have fled the neighbourhood?

In any event, we started late this year, just after the rain stopped around 8pm. Some had decorations up, but didn't answer the door, possibly because they had already run out of candy?

We could see some houses with big screen televisions showing the baseball game -- but the Jays were defeated by the Dodgers 3-1, which means the final deciding game is tomorrow!

The houses that still had candy just before 9pm were generous, trying to offload as much as possible to avoid cavities.