What Was New: April 16, 2002East Vancouver, Hastings Street, Dark Angel(Gregory Melle's Web Diary / Blog)
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We have had some nice weather for hanging out on "The Drive" as nearby Commercial Drive is now known. But we have had more wet rainy days. There was even a dump of fresh snow on the local mountains this morning. No complaints though. I am still quite happy to be back close to my Vancouver roots.
I am a short walk from the corner of Nanaimo and Hastings Streets. That is Vancouver's best neighbourhood for food shopping if you enjoy tiny bakeries, attentive butcher shops, sidewalk fruit stores and Italian / Russian / Polish delicatessens. The melange includes hardware, coffee, laundromats, pets and 99 cent pizza slices. Restaurants include Greek, Italian, Chinese, Japanese and "Canadian." Familiar names -- London Drugs, Royal Bank, 7-11, Dairy Queen, Starbucks -- only seem to increase the foot traffic without killing off the small competitors.
East Hastings is the sort of area that town planners love but find impossible to create. The bustling sidewalks here -- on one of Vancouver's busiest six lane streets -- could never be created by design.
My apartment is still in a state of disarray. For every day that I spend arranging and renovating; I have spent another day or two shopping, restoring my computer or doing personal improvement.
In late March I had LASIK laser eye surgery. It turned out to be much scarier in concept than in practice. The procedure took only a few minutes with little discomfort. [The risks are rare but quite significant. A comprehensive list of the laser eye dangers is found at SurgicalEyes.org]. The eye surgeons in Vancouver have been doing this procedure more than in most places. The competition has driven down prices and given the doctors lots of experience. I would hesitate to choose an eye doctor simply because he was the cheapest or the fastest! Eye sight is still important for most people!
For my the results turned out better than advertised. I was driving within 24 hours. My distance eyesight is as good as with glasses. I was told to expect more improvement over the next six months. I do have some small difficulty with close distance reading.
The biggest downside is that after recent weight losses, shaving of the moustache, and the loss of glasses, my image in the mirror looks quite different than my personal self image.
The Vancouver TV and movie biz is still going strong. I live a block from the old Terminal City Iron and Engineering works. For the last year it has been the principal outdoor production site for Fox's Dark Angel television series.
The have done a good job of making a post industrial site look like a futuristic slum. My apartment is in the background of the second photo.
In standard film-making manner they pretend that Vancouver is Seattle and try their best to ignore the mountain scenery.
Jessica Alba, the series star, is seen to the left in this one.
| Earlier Page - March 2002 | Later Page - May 2002 |
