Day 7: Sorry I haven't updated in a while guys.

I know the only person who's actually upset is my sister, but still. I can do better.

The fact is the last two days haven't been quite so eventful as the first few. I followed through with my plan of having a nice quiet day at home on Monday, and on Tuesday I went shopping at Metrotown which is the hugest freaking mall I've ever been to. It featured a Forever 21, which I have never been into before but have long dreamed of. I spent most of my time in there. Here's what I ended up getting:

This is a skirt

This is not exactly special, but it was super cheap.

And this is a nice dress.

These clothes don't look all that good in the pictures, but they look better on. Trust me.

Today I went out to Chinatown, which is a bus-seabus-skytrain trip, like most things in Vancouver from where I am. None of those aspects of the journey take long on their own, but it can add up to an hour and a quarter of transit, depending on how long you have to wait for things. The sky train is interesting. It smells faintly of urine and the first time I caught it I overheard a guy in a Vancouver Aquarium uniform having a very intense phone conversation with his girlfriend. It has some nice views though:
 

I've got to say, Chinatown didn't quite live up to the reputation the tourism websites gave it. It was described as 'bustling', 'vibrant' and 'entertaining'. Well, it certainly was bustling, but that's about it. It's not one of the nicer areas of Vancouver. I did get a cheap lunch though - bakeries here are much cheaper. I didn't quite trust the Chinese food. It was a hot day after all.

So I was a little underwhelmed by Chinatown. On my way back to the train station, though, I came across this line of people:

I was curious about what they were doing, so I had a closer look at one of the concrete pillars that had a bunch of flowers and stuff around it. It turned out to be a tribute for a former Canuck, Rick Rypien, who died a couple of days ago. I took the time to stop and read some of the messages.

There were flowers, cards, drawings, and some people had even written directly on the concrete. The line turned out to be a card-signing for members of his family. I've never seen that done before.

I found the whole thing very touching, which surprised me for two reasons: I had no idea who Rick Rypien was, and I usually find sports fandom fanatical and kind of silly. It always surprises me that we barely notice half the scientific and academic advances our own people make, but we go crazy for people knocking balls around. But seeing all those people lining up just for the chance to make a positive difference to a grieving family and recording their condolences and rememberances in such a permanent fashion on that pillar made me feel good, and it occurred to me that if I was involved in other aspects of sporting communities (such as the spectating part) there was a possibility that that would feel good too. It also reminded me that this a truly a great city. Even in the not-so-nice parts, you stumble onto something heartfelt. You sneeze in public and a stranger says bless you. I'm very happy and very lucky to be here.