The Weekend In East Van

Now that the kids are asleep and my wife is doing laundry I have a few spare seconds to see the photos I snapped at the B.C. Latino festival at Trout lake, also the ones from our visit to Commercial Drive. East Van as ghetto as people make it out to be isn’t that bad, hell I even live in it. Oh and my house is worth about $950,000, not bad for a ghetto huh?

I consider East Van the Brooklyn (New York) of Vancouver, it is the melting pot of all ethnic groups that come to Vancouver. Commercial Drive is the center of the Italian/Portuguese/Latino flavor in the city. Shop after shop, store after store of food markets, coffee shops and bakeries. Personally I think Commercial Drive has the most “flavor” in all of Vancouver, it has that “neighbourhood feeling”, Brooklyn style.

It’s funny my Canon SD750 always seems to be in my pocket nowadays. I guess since I don’t have to waste hard earned money on buying film it makes it way easier to snap photos of anything I see. You gotta love digital cameras…

How can you not like East Van? Fugedabout!

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Joe’s Cafe Commercial Drive

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Charity haircut event on Commercial Drive, East Vancouver

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Charity haircut event on Commercial Drive, East Vancouver

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Charity haircut event on Commercial Drive, East Vancouver

TROUT LAKE EAST VANCOUVER

Chillin on the sand at Trout Lake, East Van

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Nature shot at Trout Lake, East Van

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Old school ice cream truck at the B.C Latino Festival at Trout Lake

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Jamaican stand at B.C Latino Festival at Trout Lake

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B.C Latino Festival at Trout Lake

Ok enough for tonight, it’s 11:46 pm. I need to lie down for 8 hours and then bike ride to the crime ridden coffee shop on Kingsway in Burnaby.

Another Laptop Gets Stolen In The Coffee Shop

Unreal, it has happened again. Some dude hooked up his laptop to the power outlet, then goes to the washroom and his laptop gets stolen. Here is the thing, this person had his laptop right near the door, and the washroom is on the other side of the coffee shop. It was a dumb move on his part that cost him at least $600.

I talked to Habib the owner and he does have cameras installed to watch everything that takes place in the coffee shop, big deal. Even if you catch it on tape , what can you do with that? It’s not like a murder has taken place. The police aren’t going to care too much about stolen laptops unless it becomes a huge problem.  So they have the thief on tape, the crook might as well have smiled on camera…. I am only here about 6 hours, 5 days a week. I can only imagine how many laptops get stolen the rest of the time.

Since this place is in close proximity to local Burnaby parks where homeless sleep this could be part of the problem. I see many homeless people and junkies walking by this place on Kingsway all day long. Laptops are such an easy target, small, expensive and easy to steal.

Watch your laptop never leave it unattended!!!

Visa Has their Heads Up Their Asses

Visa what\'s wrong with you?I recently got a new Visa credit card and my spending limit is $15,000 per month, fair enough. I checked today and it seems I am pretty close to maxing out my spending limit for the month. I called Visa and paid the monthly amount owing which was like $13,250 or something. That way I would be able to still have room on my Visa card to pay for advertising for the rest of the month. I then figured I should increase my monthly limit. I asked the Visa representative on the phone, if I could increase my spending limit stating that instead of paying my monthly bill before it came it would make more sense to increase my monthly spending limit. I have great credit and no liabilities at all, not even one. Everything  I own is paid in full, 3 houses and my Escalade, all paid for. She states that they cannot increase my monthly spending limit for 3 months…. I was like why? “It’s our policy”, she explains, blah, blah, blah. I can understand that, but here is the funny but stupid thing and I told her this. I said, do you realize that I can apply for another Visa credit card and basically increase my monthly spending that way. Is that not stupid or what?

The reason I don ‘t want to get another Visa credit card is that it’s just more paperwork and credit cards to keep track of, but this is probably the route I will have to take. Or, I can just continue to pay of the monthly bill before it arrives and then I wll have $15,000 available to pay for ads the rest of the month.

To me that is retarded financial institutions, they have a lame rule that you can easily get around and I know they know this. BLah, whatever it seems I always have to fine some loophole to make sh*t work the way I want it to.

And the beat goes on…

Lesson Learned – Watch Your Laptop In Public Places

I just learned to be more careful with my laptop in public places. I like to work outside of the home because I have 2 kids and a wife at home and it’s pretty tough to get work done. Recently I started bike riding to a local coffee shop on Kingsway in Burnaby.

Obviously I have a laptop with me and just plug it into the wall here at the coffee shop and get free wireless internet and away I go. I was always kind of worried about people ripping off my laptop so I never went to the washroom unless I brought it with me. I started getting complacent and leaving my laptop plugged in and I would quickly go to the washroom, and then hurry back.

Today was a well learned lesson

People come and go all day, it’s a coffee shop right? I don ‘t pay much attention to who’s coming in unless they look like junkies. Anyways a guy came in today opened up his laptop and placed it on the ledge facing Kingsway, and he then went to get a coffee just 10 feet behind him. I guess some sh*tbag must have been watching because when the guy came back he was wondering where his laptop was. This all happened 12 feet from and I didn’t see a damn thing, in under 2 minutes.

The guy who stole the latpop must of had some balls to do something like that, he could have easily been caught. He will probably sell it for $250 max, risking his free for a $250 pretty f*cking dumb. 

This could have easily happened to me, and now I know better…… Take this is as a warning, it happens all the time. I was lucky it didn’t happen to me.

Back to work.