Life

The vacation planning drama continued through most of the week. The main cost for me should really be the lodging, but I haven’t even decided where I’m going at what point, so to me the main expense that I think about, and I’m pretty sure this is a fallacy, is the actual first round-trip ticket over to Asia and then back. Oh well, it is what it is. It’s at least the gateway cost — nothing else can be planned until I settle this.

For my previous trip to Asia, the Where the Wind Takes Me travel blog series in late April 2024, I bought a one-way ticket much nearer to the date of the departure, so it cost me $623 for the ticket there, and then a return ticket a week before that flight, which cost $884. Though that return ticket was from Singapore and not Tokyo, so it was more expensive by definition. It probably wasn’t a lot cheaper from Tokyo at that point though. Anyway this was because I only decided to go there in mid-March 2024, and even the initial seed to go there was only planted in Feb 2024 when I first chatted with Quintopia about an opportunity to meet up there. Plus I valued the freedom of wandering around Asia without a firm date to return home.

For my May 2023 trip, when I went to Kyoto to study at the RSJP for five weeks in the The Slightly Longer Way travel blog series, I bought a two-way ticket to that only a month or so before the trip — the plane trip was on May 06 2023 and I only bought the ticket on Apr 18 2023. That one cost $996 for a round trip between Edmonton and Tokyo (and separate trains from Tokyo to Kyoto).

Then there was the October 2022 trip, the Kami Watch Over Me travel blog series. That one was weird, partly because it was just coming out of COVID, but partly because I only bought the two-way ticket one week before my trip. That one actually cost $1,551, but I used a bunch of credit card points that I had to take off $1,000 or so from the cost so I only ended up paying about a third of it. And I got some points back from it afterwards too.

For this upcoming trip, WestJet had the cheapest tickets by a little bit but I specifically chose to avoid them for two reasons. The first is that they had that recent security breach, and in my own little annoyed way, I wanted to punish them for it. The second is that they apparently have an upcoming potential strike in early 2026 as well (local), which I support in principle, but which could easily go on top of either my outgoing or return trip. Dad actually called me to warn me of that because Mom apparently raised it as a concern when they heard that I was planning a trip, and I took that as a sign to not fly with them this time. So with the two reasons in hand, I smacked WestJet into the discard pile where JAL already was.

So I really had just one option to get from Edmonton to Japan and back for my main flight. This was Air Canada/All Nippon Airways — Air Canada would do the flight to Vancouver and then ANA would do the Vancouver to Tokyo leg. And the reverse on the way back. Their flights do combine together into one ticket, but between the two, ANA‘s website generally had cheaper fights than Air Canada‘s, so that’s where I spent most of the week lurking on.

I signed up for ANA‘s Mileage Club system early in the week and found a trip that I was fine with — it wasn’t an amazing deal per se but it was $477.17 on the outgoing trip and $588.80 on the way back, for a total of $1,065.97. More importantly, it checked all the boxes that I wanted — I wanted a route that did not take me through the USA, so no Seattle or San Francisco or Los Angeles layovers, just Vancouver. I wanted the trips to not be too long — each leg was about 15-16 hours total including the layovers. There were also two return trip options, one that landed at Edmonton International Airport at about 8:45 pm and the other one at 11:45 pm or so. I obviously wanted one that landed earlier — if I landed at 11:45 pm, I’d have to hurry to catch the very last city bus back from the airport to Century Park LRT Station at 12:15 am, and if I missed that then I was going to either be stuck at the airport or have an expensive ride back home at the very end of my trip, which would be a major bummer. And even if I did catch the bus, I would have a dark and lonely walk back home and would not reach home until past 1 am.

So anyway, I decided on that trip itinerary. Went to make the purchase. Then noticed that when I was signing up for the ANA Mileage Club, I either did not fill in my middle name or there was no space for me to fill it in, I’m not quite sure. But then they seemed to use that name for the actual registration itself, and warned that the name needed to match my passport or something like that, so now I was a little stuck since my names did not really match. There was a place to enter my passport details in my ANA account anyway, so I tried that, but I wasn’t sure if that really worked because the warning that popped up on the website still used the Mileage Club name listing that did not include my middle name.

So I went to contact the AMA help line. Except, the Mileage Club line closed at 5:30 pm or 6:30 pm local time or something and… when I checked the time, it was 2 minutes after closing. I tried calling them anyway and just hit a bot. Rude. So I had to pause for the day and call back the next day.

The next day, I talked to a Japanese lady who was indeed speaking English, but was obviously very bad at it. She was trying her best, but it was hard to understand it, and she mangled the spelling of my middle name a few times but we eventually figured it out and she fixed my account. I then went to go try to make the purchase, and.. the flight path that landed back home at 8:45 pm was gone. Well, it was still there, but instead of costing about $600 it now cost about $1,600. It was $800 on the Air Canada version of the site, which was far too much anyway, but the Air Canada version of the outgoing trip was much pricier than the ANA one so that was still a non-starter.

So I was annoyed by this. I did see that a couple of the itineraries that I had been playing with were still stuck in my history on the ANA website though, and that if I tried to book that flight again then the seats that I had selected were greyed out as though they were selected. The ANA site said old booking attempts would disappear in a few hours or something so I decided to wait and just check now and then if the price on the 8:45 pm flight dropped.

By now it was Wednesday late afternoon, so I waited for the rest of the day to see if the price would drop on the 8:45 flight. Nope.

Then the entire Thursday. Nope. Although, I did find and see ANA drop some even cheaper outgoing flights — I could actually have bought a two-way ticket for a whopping $780.17 round-trip on multiple departure dates, but it would have been a different, earlier return date than the one I was planning for, and it was also the 11:45 pm landing time flight on that return date. So I didn’t go for that. It was interesting learning that I could just keep checking around and finding different prices on different days though. But anyway my gut told me to keep on waiting, so I passed.

On Friday, I didn’t actually check it for most of the day until late on in the evening, but at that point I noticed that the cheaper 8:45 pm flights were finally back on ANA! I went to buy those tickets, finally, and noticed that even though the departure prices were no longer as cheap as on Thursday, they were still cheaper than they were earlier in the week. I ended up finally getting my ticket for $996.17 in all — the outgoing flight went from $477.17 to $407.17 in the ensuing week, and the return 8:45 pm flight went from $588.90 to $589.00. So even though it took a few extra days, I ended up saving about $70 more. Yay? I was really tempted by that $780 ticket though, but it just sacrificed too much.

Even though I was still 4.5 months out, I noticed that most of the tickets for the Vancouver to Tokyo (and back) plane seemed to be already gone. At least, when I went to make seat selection, there were only about 10-15 free seats I could take in Economy and only 2-3 that were on the aisle, which is my preferred seat. I don’t think there were any window seats left at all. The window and aisle seats towards the middle and front of the economy class cost an extra $50 or something to book though, and I was having none of that, so I took some aisle seats near the back of the plane. I don’t mind those seats at all. Oh, but some of the seats were marked with babies, which I had never seen in seat selection maps on any website before. I do mind those loud germ capsules, so I thought was nice to know since it meant that I could sit away from them.

So anyway, I have the main ticket that will anchor my trip now. I cannot refund it into cash, though I can reschedule it if needed or basically refund it into credit for another flight. I haven’t bought or booked anything else yet, though, though I think my next step might be some lodging options. I have some other things I want to plan and do first though so that might be a few weeks from now. But it’s a big load off my chest for now. Now the trip feels real and will be happening in some capacity!

As a sidenote, Jon is also going overseas with his girlfriend later on next month, to Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia. Oct 12-29. I’m listing all that down so there’s a log of it as I believe we have no logs at all of our earlier family trips and I’ve wished several times before that I had those dates and locations written down somewhere.

But the plane ticket odyssey was just one of the two purchase-related big things that happened this week. The other thing was that someone from work, Kirk, offered up his Valve Index on our workplace’s games-related social channel for $100. I jumped at this one — I’ve been musing VR games for ages but a headset, especially the better headsets, have always been far too expensive for me. The Index isn’t exactly a top tier headset, but it’s a pretty good one, well above the Meta Quest that I had been thinking of getting previously in the past.

The kit I got is lightly used, and he was selling it because it was a hassle to use under his current Linux distro and because he used something else now for his computer-related exercise time. $100 was a great price for it for me, because the kit that I got included two controllers and two base stations too, and the cost of this kit on Steam is currently $1,319 CAD (and is sold out). Sure it should be cheaper because it’s a used set, but he could definitely have sold the entire thing for a lot more. For my part, I plan to slowly and occasionally explore VR with this, and I won’t be selling it (at least not to the general public, nor for a profit) even if I end up not using it, since I feel like that would essentially be a betrayal of an unspoken contract.

The catch with this sale though was that I had to pick it up from his place. And the box was huge! Luckily he was located in a convenient location in town and not terribly far from my own place. We set up the meeting for Saturday afternoon and I went down to meet Kirk in front of his apartment, picked up the box from him, and took an Uber home. I then wiped it down with wet wipes and set it out to dry. I basically got a Valve Index VR set and a round-trip ticket to Tokyo for less than the cost of a brand new Valve Index VR set.

I tried it out in the evening and it worked great, and even does work with my glasses but they get squished a bit against my eyes. I’ll need to go get some prescription lenses for the lenses so I don’t risk scratching them with my glasses. And to do that I’ll probably need to go get a prescription from the optometrist, something I haven’t done since 2021. Ick. The VR headset also made me a bit woozy, but I believe that’s always to be expected when doing VR for the first time.

Before I met up with Kirk, I took the opportunity to visit an event downtown since I was going to be out and about anyway. I went down to a Mid-Autumn Festival Celebration (local) happening down at the Edmonton Chinatown Multi-Cultural Centre, a building near the Quarters LRT Station downtown. I’d never been there before.

The inside of the building looked like this:

And the event was taking place in the hall past those doors. There was a stage to the right of the hall, rows of chairs arranged in front of it, and then a couple rows of tables towards the back and along the sides of the hall. And two food trucks outside the building. The room more or less looked like this (I only really took shots of the stage from behind the tables, and not the other way around since performances were taking place up front throughout the time that I was there):

I arrived to a rendition of O Canada from the Edmonton Chinese Choir society, pictured in the first two shots, and then stayed around for the Edmonton Kun Seng Keng Dragon and Lion Dance Troupe, pictured in the last two shots. There was also a downstairs area with an opera? going on, but I didn’t go down there because I had limited time here and wasn’t too interested in that. Their poster was pretty though.

As a chronicler, I also took a picture of the event performance schedule and the sponsor/acknowledgement list, because those things seldom survive from event to event.

I also did buy some items from the event itself, even though there weren’t a ton of tables. I bought a small bag of lotus leaf tea for $4.88 from a table ran by a company called Choy Hope Trading:

I’d never heard of that tea before. It kind of tastes like mint, but a little smokier at the same time, and sweet around the edges of the tongue. And the taste isn’t overwhelming even if I steep it overly long. It’s very nice!

Then I picked up some postcards from a table from KTB Photography:

He was a photographer selling lots of nice scenery wall art too, but I don’t really have space for that sort of thing at the moment. Edmonton postcards, however, I can take and give away to people while on vacation, a custom that I’ve done since my first trip back to Asia. And they’re kinda hard to find in Edmonton these days since Canada Post no longer sells them. He agreed and commiserated with me when I mentioned this. They were $3 a piece, but $5 for 2, so I bought 4 for $10.

Lastly, while wandering by a table, I was admiring a number of fans made of what I think is some sort of silk, and the woman manning the table pointed at her grandma next to her and said that those were hand-painted by her. I do need and use hand fans, especially in the summer, but these ones looked kind of fragile to use as an actual fan, they reminded me of large, single-use goldfish scoops. Maybe they’re not that fragile though! And they were pretty. And I was happy to believe her story and support the old grandma. So I picked one up for $5. They said they didn’t really have a shop or company that I could feature but also at the same time pointed me to this Kawaii Balloons sign:

She also mentioned something about setting up downstairs, and that phone number resolves to the ICPA Edmonton Chinese Opera Group website (local), so after putting two and two together I think they were a fundraising table for that group. Cool!

I was also really tempted to buy these lanterns but I didn’t in the end. I’m not sure what I would have done with them.

In the end this was my loot from the event:

Along with some scannable ephemera that I will upload to the Internet Archive at some point!

On the way out, I also picked up this “interest class” list from the front desk of the building. I found this one, well, interesting:

Specifically, I found that Gu Qin class super interesting. That instrument is similar to the Japanese koto, which blog superfans might remember I have mentioned once or twice as being an instrument that I really liked and considered trying to invest in and learn to play at one point. They’re hard (and expensive) to get in Canada though. But this one seems like a good compromise. Hmm. One of these years.

After the event, I walked over to a restaurant called Double Greeting Won Ton House, situated very conveniently next to the Quarters LRT Station itself. Like, literally steps away from it with no barrier in between:

The restaurant itself was fairly packed but not completely so:

I ordered my go-to dish, Shanghai Noodles (with Pork in this case). It cost $16, $16.80 after tax, and came on a large plate.

This was delicious and very satisfying, I can STILL taste it now as I write this blog post hours later, and then again at 3 am the next morning when I added this half a sentence. There was a surprise waiting for me when I went up to the front to pay though — they said the establishment was cash only, and I hadn’t realized this. Thankfully, because I hadn’t bought that lantern, I did still have enough cash on me to pay for the meal. And hey, I realized something in the moment as well — cash only also meant that there was no tipping system, and no tip was asked for or given. I paid exact fare only. I’ll take that tradeoff any day!

I then wandered off to Kirk‘s apartment complex to receive the Valve Index kit from him and bring it home. The box was not heavy, but was far too big to fit into any of the bags I brought, and it was drizzling a little to boot, so I took an Uber home for a little below $20 after tip, instead of trying to take the train home. Along the way to his apartment, I snapped pictures of things that interested me along the way, so enjoy this smorgasbord of Edmonton downtown pictures:

Those two (three?) events were the big highlights of the week, in terms of narration and pictures anyway. But several other things happened this week as well. The first was our in-person team meeting that happened on Wednesday. This was the second one that we have had recently, the first having taken place last month, and as usual it was nice seeing everyone again. We even had a former team member crash the meeting and hang out with us for half an hour or so. Then we went to HUB Mall for lunch and I bought some Ho-Hos, but it gave me a tummyache later on in the day. I really need to stop eating there. (I probably won’t, though.)

Another thing was that we had another fire alarm in the building on Thursday afternoon. This hasn’t happened in a while, minus an annoying test alarm or two weeks ago that went on overly long and made people go downstairs to check out whether it was real or not. But it’s a sign that winter is coming. Our apartment fire alarm malfunctions all the time during winter and it’s irritating as heck. I need to get out of here!

Another reason I need to get out of here is that the management company is taking another step towards enshittifying the place in a couple of weeks. Specifically, this:

Um, no. Firstly, you don’t punish everyone for something random that happens very rarely. We do sometimes get homeless people wandering by, but they’re not common even around the general neighbourhood, and you’ve steadily made things harder on people by locking the outer doors after hours and on weekends, and now this. If they wanted to come in enough to tailgate after residents coming in, whether there is an automatic door opener ON THE INNER DOOR or not will not affect this, and you are significantly lowering the quality of life for everyone in the building.

Rent Midwest/Village at Southgate is so bad. Seriously. I am not the biggest proponent or fan of the homeless, and I think badly of them in general even though I know sometimes it’s not their fault they are in that situation, but THIS is the management blaming a group of people who cannot defend themselves from the accusations, in order to justify removing a service that benefits the people that actually live here, just to save a couple thousand dollars a year. Stay classy, Rent Midwest.

I also found, much to my dismay, two more small ants in my bathroom this week. One on the counter and one, somehow, in the bathtub. I had not seen any ants (or any other bugs) since I noted finding another two a month ago, during a heat wave. Well there’s no heat wave now, and I do not know where they are crawling in from or what they’re headed to, so although I consider (single) ants benign and not scary, I disposed of both ants, and then sprayed some insecticide around some of the bathroom corners again and hoped that they would not return.

Lastly, I seldom take sunset pictures anymore due to my stream taking place in the evenings, but I did pause the stream briefly on Sunday, Sep 21 in order to take this picture from the balcony at about 7:40 pm: