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So we actually managed to find a Dim Sum place to eat breakfast today. If you have been following my blogs, you would know that we failed miserably on day 5. I actually don’t have too much to say about this, the food was moderate—not bad but not spectacular. A lot of people didn’t get full off of it though, so we ended up going to a Japanese hot dog stand. Now these, these were spectacular.
After breakfast, we headed to Stanley Park for a bike ride/observation. We took a bus in Vancouver for the first time, and this is when I started to realize how unique San Francisco buses are. Everywhere I go, buses are short and colorful(on the interior). The buses in Seattle and Vancouver, at least have an entirely blue interior and cushioned seats. Here in San Francisco, we have long, old, and worn-down buses with brown and gray interiors. We also have brown seats(excluding new buses and metro, which seem to follow the colorful trend of Seattle and Vancouver) without cushion. It’s okay MUNI, I still love your buses. They get me to where I need to go—sometimes. Alright, I must stop myself before I go on a rant about San Francisco buses. Alright so back to what I’m supposed to be talking about, the bike ride. We didn’t actually bike inside of Stanley Park, we biked on the perimeter along the seawalls. It became more of a luxury ride for me more than anything, as the view was beautiful(and redundant) and my rented hybrid bike was amazing. Apparently, I have a racing bike at home and it is no where as comfortable. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much opportunity to observe the space as we speeded through. Not that there was much to observe anyway, we literally just biked along the sea. There was a huge party along the beach with many unclothed men(and women) so that's interesting to say the least. Perhaps nudity laws are not as strictly enforced in Vancouver as it is here. Last and DEFINITELY NOT LEAST(this is anger, not excitement), the Vancouver Night Market. This place brings tears to my eyes, initially of wonder and amazement but gradually to sadness. Let’s just say I came in here with a good amount of money and left with a wallet. Just a wallet. Strolling along the market stands, my heart said yes and my brain said no but as Roxette once said, “Listen to your Heart.” And I did. No regrets. The night market is extremely busy, though I’m not too sure whether it’s with residents or tourists. I would guess that there is a good amount of both, though I don’t think residents have much reason to go frequently. It’s a tourist attraction if anything, and it really does do a good job of attracting tourist. Why? Well, a good amount of the stands sell anime/manga products, which draws a population in and of itself. Also, a certain feeling of thrill and excitement occurs walking on the streets in the nightly hours. A night market, by concept seems extremely beneficial to both the residents of a city as well as the city itself. I presume that renting costs are extremely high, and that the land belongs to the city. Four major benefits of the night market
To be frank, it is not nearly as viable to implement a night market in San Francisco as it is in Vancouver. First, the nightlife in San Francisco is not nearly as prominent as it is in Vancouver. You can argue that their nightlife exists because of the night market and this is undoubtedly true, but the nightlife in San Francisco is literally non-existent. Given the state that we are in, it’d be a dangerous trip in itself to and from the night market. The second thing is that we lack an ideal space to host the night market. Your first thought may be Chinatown and while this may seem like a great idea initially, there are many potential consequences. Potential Consequences of hosting a night market in Chinatown
This marks the end to my blog. Thanks for sticking through with me! And if you’re curious(you’re probably not), the total number of McDonalds I counted throughout Seattle and Vancouver is 11. Truly, I am disappointed. I think I saw more McDonald's walking through one block in Hong Kong. -David Yi
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Today we went to Stanley Park to ride the bikes we rented.We rode along the seawall and I noticed what people are doing. At the start, where I can still see inside of the park. People like to do calm things, like sleeping, reading books, and having picnics. They also have separate lanes for the pedestrian and bikers. In the middle of the ride I see people fishing with a giant net. There were three water parks and all of them were full of people. In the end, I didn’t noticed much, but there was a park. Inside the park, there were two sections. One for adults and the other for children. This is a cool place to hang out with friends and family.
Later we went to Night Market. It is a place where lots of people go, even though it is at night. This place sells a lot of different food, clothing, and decoration. They even have a game section, but you have to pay to play. Wish we could have one like this in San Francisco. This would be a great way to attract tourist at night, when everything is closed. This might be the reason why the Night Market in Vancouver is so popular. Overall, I think this place is a money eating machine and is a fun place to go at night. -Andy He The day before we left Vancouver was an adventurous day. We biked along the seawall throughout Stanley Park. During our biking journey, I enjoyed the amazing breeze that kept me cool from the sun. After we finished, I was fascinated with Stanley Park’s seawall path for three reasons. One of them is the path having separate lanes where one of the lanes is for pedestrians and the other lane is for bikers. Another reason is the number of resting spots for people to rest. The final reason is the trail that leads bikers to a tunnel that they can bike through. Based on these reason, I think that the seawall path is beneficial to San Francisco’s infrastructure because there are very few bike paths that are very close to the ocean.
When we left Stanley Park, we walked to the Richmond Night Market and explored at the night market. What I like most about the Richmond Night Market is the variety of booths that convince me to purchases foods and merchandises. What makes Richmond Night Market beneficial is that it turns an empty lot into a vibrant space where tourists and locals can walk and shop around at night. In addition, the night market makes a lot of revenue because many people line up just to pay to get in the night market. If we implement a night market in San Francisco, the night market might be successful. Why? Well, there are many factors that we should consider before a night market can happen in San Francisco. We need to be aware about the noise level, accessibility, environment, and etc. Once all of these factors work out with the location, a night market can potentially be viable. -SC [Before you proceed to read this, just to give you a warning that this blog is extremely long (yes, even longer than all of my other blogs..). So read at your own risk..]
Waking up naturally without the need for an alarm clock is surely one of the greatest feelings on Earth! Today is an unusual day because we all woke up pretty late since we needed the rest, due to the tiredness and lack of sleep that have piled up in the previous days of this trip. To start off with this fun day of our trip, our first stop was to go eat dim sum brunch at a Chinese restaurant located near us in our neighborhood. This was actually a new experience to me because I usually only go yumcha with my biological family, and this was the first time I went yumcha with my CCDC family. In my opinion, the food was decent and the price was fair. Before we head on to the next activity on our agenda, we decided to revisit the wonderful Aberdeen Shopping centre again since we had some spare time. There, we did more observations of open space areas and as well as some window shopping, or even some real shopping. After we spent time lingering around the grand shopping mall, we made our way to our next destination - Stanley Park! With it being one of the most famous tourist attractions in Vancouver, Stanley Park is a must-visit site for our trip and has a perfect environment for biking. Before we actually started biking, we took some time to explore around the area and did some more urban observations. Then we headed across the street to the bike rental place and got ourselves bikes that we’ll be having for the next two hours or so. For myself, I actually don’t really know how to bike. I would say that I am a beginner for biking when I just had a “biking lesson/training” a few days ago just for this part of the trip. I hope I am ready for this two-hour or so of biking. Each of us rented a bike for ourselves except me who needed to ride on a tandem, which is a bike with two seats. Before we started to bike, we practiced for a while in one of the open space areas to ensure that we were fine with the bikes we had. With the map of Stanley Park that we have in our hands, we planned our biking trail around the park that would give us the best view of the park and opportunity to explore the area and be able to go back to our starting point in the limited time we had. We started our biking journey at the beginning of the trail. And off we went, following the path and biking towards the inner parts of the area. We made several stops along our way at the resting stations and also took the time to enjoy the beautiful view and fresh air environment. Biking along this path has been a very nice experience, with all the exercising and enjoying the scenery. One negative moment that happened along my journey was when my shoelace got stuck into the left pedal and it even swirled around the pedal piece. Unfortunately, I fell down on the ground but good thing was that I didn’t injured myself. After the incident, we fixed the bike and I also tucked in my shoelace to prevent this case to happen again. As we continued on our journey along the seawall path of Stanley Park, we saw more and more beautiful sceneries of the harbor. One thing I like about this seawall path is its location which is next to the water, allowing bikers and pedestrians to enjoy the beauty of the city while they exercise. In addition, I think that the seawall path was well-designed that its wideness has a fair distance apart that allows pedestrians to walk along next to the bike lane. On my way along the seawall path, I have also noticed the visible signs and words that direct people to either the bike or pedestrian lane. As we approached the other end of our path, we got the chance to see the beauty of the waterfront in its whole picture. Reaching to the midpoint of our bike journey, we took a long break to rest for a while and took a lot of group photos along the seawall. Then we started to head back along the seawall path to our original starting point of our bike journey. Along our way, we made a few stops, including one at a park area that has a large open space area in grassland designed for picnics and also swings and other facilities that allow children to play on. We continued our way back and successively arrived at our meeting area. After this two hour bike ride, some of us actually still wanted to bike longer, despite the fact that we were all starving due to the exercise. Biking at Stanley Park and along the seawall path was fun, but nonetheless we still have to return the bikes back to the bike rental place located across the street. Overall, I think that this biking experience was fun and a good amount of exercising for me. I enjoyed my first biking experience as much as I do with the sceneries along our way. I think that what I like most about biking is that it allows me to explore new places and gain new experiences. I feel that Stanley Park has a great and fresh environment which provides the opportunity for visitors and specifically bikers to learn more about the city, and that it is also a good use of open space area. After we biked and explored around Stanley Park, we were heading on to our next and final destination of the day - Richmond Night Market! On the fifth day of our Vancouver trip, we have finally made a good use of our TransLink MultiPass and decided to take the bus after a long two-hour bike ride. In the previous days in Vancouver, we’ve been only taking the Skytrain and due to the honor system, our multipass somewhat became useless in a way. On our way to the night market, we took several different buses and walked for a bit, and we discovered an area that is near downtown that captured our attention and made us stayed for a while. In front of us where we were standing, we see a wall with a map of the world. In front of that, in the distance closer to us, there’s a big pond of water with a several small platforms designed for people to walk through as a path. This triggered the excitement in some of us, and we all ended up walking through the path by stepping and hopping on those small platforms. Before we left the site, we all made the word “Campaign” and two hearts at both ends of the word with our body gestures to represent our love and passion towards our program. Now we have finally arrived at this place, the night market! We already saw at the first sight the popularity of this night market through the amount of people standing in line waiting to enter. To not waste our time and to make the most out of our trip, we bought ourselves fastpasses that allowed us to enter without waiting in line for at least two hours. It was around 7:30 PM when we were standing next to the giant rubber yellow duck figure at the entrance, and we set our meet up time to leave at 10 PM; then we split ourselves into smaller groups and went about to explore this wonderful place. Now what is the first thing that you would see at a night market? Of course, the answer is people. I already see the success of the night market through its crowdedness and human flow in the area. I assume that the visitors for the market consist of both tourists and locals of the city. We first walked around the merchandise area, where there seems to be a great variety of things for sale, including phone cases, anime posters and keychains, plushies, pens, and etc. Every merchandise “store” is separated by their own cabin or tent, and there are numerous merchandise stores in the whole night market that we’ve walked through and looked around. Many of them may actually sell similar or even the same things. After exploring the merchandise part of the night market, I feel that most of the products are associated with the Japanese culture, hence there are many anime related things for sale. Besides the merchandise aspect of the market that attracted me, another part that also caught most of my attention was of course something that I’ve been craving for (especially since we were just biking for two hours earlier)....FOOD! When we first made our way to the food section of the night market, the smell of various food and snacks already attracted our smell sense. With my eyes gazing at the food booths in front of us, I can feel my stomach’s call and desire for food. We walked along the few lanes of food booths, to compare prices and to decide what we want to eat. Along our way, I’ve seen many booths selling snacks and drinks, such as boba (aka the well-known tapioca milk tea originated in Taiwan), fried squid and octopus, and popcorn chicken, which I don’t find surprising since these are the most famous snacks that you would find at boba shops that exist almost everywhere today. Besides these snacks, there was a specific snack that I saw people holding that caught my attention the most -- the rotato! I was attracted to it because I’ve seen pictures of this type of food from other night markets, such as the one in Taiwan or Japan (and perhaps night markets of other countries or cities as well), and so I wouldn’t be surprised that it would appear in the Vancouver Richmond night market. With the excitement to go hunt (or search) for the rotato, the food that I know I will get for sure, I walked around the food area with my peers in every corner. Before we found the rotato food booth, we checked out several other stores along our way, such as the dragon’s beard candy, strawberry skewers covered with crystal sugar, and different colored drinks covered with smoke in thin air. After walking and exploring for a while, we have finally came to encounter the food that I was craving for! Already, we see a lot of people waiting in line, and we finally got our rotatoes after the wait. As usual, following the tradition of “camera eats first before ourselves,” we took many pictures of this artistic piece of food before we actually started eating it, despite the fact that my stomach was growling and whining for me to feed it. We continued to explore around the merchandise area and searched for things that we want to buy. What triggered my excitement in this night market besides the rotato was the Doraemon objects that caught my attention in many of the merchandise stores. There were, in fact, many Doraemon things that I wanted to buy, but I was mentally awake and balanced out that they weren’t all worth or useful to buy. I did ended up buying one Doraemon thing from the night market though, and it was quite useful -- a Doraemon wallet! My wallet was already making its way to the landfill before I went on this trip, as it was starting to break apart. In this trip, all the money bills and coins that I store in my wallet just furthermore increases its damage and sends it closer to the trashcan. I figured that after this trip, I would definitely need a new wallet, and now this is a perfect timing for me to encounter this lovely Doraemon wallet! Our group then split apart as several of my peers went off in searching for some anime posters, while my friend and I continued to shop around for souvenirs for friends. We came about to a phone case store and bought two iPhone 6 cases, one for myself and one for my friend, since we both seem that we need a new phone case. We see that the time is almost up and we would have to meet up with the rest of our group at the entrance soon, and so we quickly went back to the food area to buy the giant ice cream that we saw earlier when we were exploring. We were a bit disappointed when we found that the green tea flavor was sold out already, but nonetheless we still wanted to try the ice cream and so we bought the vanilla flavor. After we picked up our order, we quickly rushed to the entrance since it was just a few more minutes before 10 PM. At that time, we actually didn’t want to leave the night market yet because we really love this place, as if we were Cinderella who didn’t want to leave by midnight. When we arrived at the entrance still trying to catch our breath, we panicked for a bit since we saw no one of our group there. I was trying to analyze the possibilities with my friend, which were either we went to the wrong meeting area, our group left without us (which is unlikely), or everyone else was just enjoying the night market too much that they were all late. Since we stayed there for a while and saw no one else coming back, we went to look about in the night market. After we discovered that everyone else is still shopping and looking around, we continued to go shopping for souvenirs since our meet-up time is now changed to 11 PM, which is when the night market closes. Before we left the market, I did some last minute shopping and bought two octopus shoulder pins and a pillow for my friends. I actually feel that the merchandise and food here have the power of calling us to buy them, as we all did spent a lot of money at this place. I guess our whole group left the market with their wallets in tears. In the end, we all left with handfuls of things we bought from the night market, and off our way we were back to our home to enjoy the last night of our trip in Vancouver! The Richmond Night Market provided me a whole new and fun experience of what it is like to live in a city with active nightlife outdoors. It attracted many people through its fun activities and a variety of food and merchandise. I find that night market food and some of the merchandise for sale are unique and special, as if you might not be able to find these same objects in other places, which is what I like most about the Richmond Night Market. Having a local night market not only can bring revenue for the city by attracting both locals and tourists into a concentrated area to become consumers for many small businesses, but it also provides a source of entertainment for people to enjoy their night with their friends and family! Our group showed support to this event first of all by attending it, and as well as spending most of our money there; meanwhile, we also enjoyed our night there as it got us all hyped up and excited. In my opinion, I think that night markets in San Francisco sounds like an idea that we can try. These types of event can help to activate the nightlife of our city of San Francisco, and thus meanwhile bring revenue to our city. I feel that night markets are places that provide people the opportunity to really see and know a city better, thus having night markets in SF can promote its beauty to both visitors to the city and local San Franciscans. Overall, this trip has provided me a wonderful experience and opportunity to explore two cities: Seattle and Vancouver. Our group has explored upon the topics that are relevant to our program Campaign Academy and our organization CCDC, which are the public transportation system and city planning in both cities. This 8-day trip can be considered either long or short, long because all the packed agenda and sleepless nights made us all felt tired, but short because many fun moments were created throughout this trip! One thing that I find ironic was that we took the bus for most of the time in Seattle when we didn’t have any day passes, whereas we only took the bus for once or twice in Vancouver when we actually had a multipass for five days. Well, I guess we liked to exercise more when we were in Vancouver, or maybe it was just because of the time constraint of our trip. Learning trips like this one do bring me a lot of new knowledge of new cities especially, and I have had a great experience exploring in Chicago last year also with my program Campaign Academy. Although urban studies and city planning may not be involved in my future career, it is surely a topic that I’m interested. It is good to learn how cities are built and development, and how they maintain their prosperity and sustainability. This trip gave me the chance not only to explore and compare other cities to my own city but also to learn more about my peers! Through this trip, I have developed a closer bond with my friends, and we have created many fun, sweet, and great memories together! I enjoyed this learning trip as it broadened my horizon and expanded upon my perspective of how I view this world. Sometimes, we just need to take a break and be away from our own city, and so we can go out for some fresh air and to explore other cities in the world! P.S. Now this comes to the conclusion of my blogs for this learning trip, and I would appreciate (actually I would be surprised) if you actually read through all my blogs. Not that I don’t support my own writing, but I would actually advise you to read the blogs of my peers, as they are much shorter than mine. However, if you really want to get a real detailed sense of how we’ve gone through our 8 days in these two new cities for most of us and also what we’ve experienced and got out of from this trip, feel free to read (or maybe skim) through my blogs! Once again, thank you very much for reading! P.S.S. Hmm….I just realized, now that I have travelled to and explored around two new cities, that I have just took a step closer to reaching my dream goal -- To travel around the world (and maybe with a significant other in the future?)! =) - Shirley Tsang The areas around Stanley Park are as crowded as San Francisco’s Chinatown during the day. We had quite the ride in Stanley Park. Although we went around the seawalls instead of Stanley park, the view was spectacular. With the sunset approaching, the warmth of the sunlight would shine onto your skin. Many would compare the Stanley Park to the Golden Gate Park of San Francisco. However, that would not empathize on the popularity of Stanley Park. Not only a tourist attraction, the Stanley park invites the locals to exercise and entertain themselves.
Being in the Richmond neighborhood really gives the Night Market the advantage. Not only attracting the many tourists that pass by, but the locals that live there as well. Providing entertainment as well as shops, the night market excels not only at attracting the sea of people that enter, but keeping them there. While having worthwhile fun and food, the trip to the night market should be carefully planned to ensure that your money is as worthwhile as the place. Not only the budgeting but also the state of mind you walk into the night market with will change the course of your destination. The night market is availability makes it more dependable, allowing people to reach it easily using the Skytrain. The night market creates a kind of community that is very connected through games, food, and music. -Steven Jiang Wow, today was a very hot day. This far up North and I still can't escape this ridiculous San Francisco weather. Just kidding, what weather am I talking about? Seriously it was very hot today.
Despite it being so hot today, we all had plenty of sleep and a lot of free time. We all ate some very expensive Dim Sum then went shopping at Aberdeen mall until 3 pm for biking! We rode the sky train towards Downtown and transferred to a bus heading for Stanley park. Apparently there was a horde of nudist bikers right when we were renting out bikes. Seems like San Francisco is not the only place where you would see naked people, with pride. Anyways, Stanley park was beautiful and had a mixed biker/pedestrian lane right before you enter the main part of the island. There were many other bikers so we sometimes got separated while biking on the trail. As we approached the beach, oh god, it's exactly what you'd see in San Francisco's beaches. At this point I took off my glasses to reduce pain from the bike helmet and tunnel visioned the trail to the end. Now it was 6 pm after the biking and we headed towards Richmond, not for home, but for the night market. On the way, I saw many ducks and an extremely long line. The workers there said the waiting line would be two hours but we bought an expensive express ticket to cut everyone(Nice). As I entered the night market, I quickly realized that this was actually a night carnival. Gaming, food, merchandise booths. The long line. The high prices. Everything connected. Buying food here is like buying a complete dinner at an amusement park, that's expensive. My image of a night market is a place for businesses in the city to keep working longer for more customers. In the end, I bought various food from the market and enjoyed them all. The only thing the market matched my image was the liveliness of the place. Everyone seems to be having fun with no worry. I saw a lot of families in the market, maybe this is the only time families could spend time with each other as a family after work and all. Overall this was a great place. I personally think there should be a night market around or in SF Chinatown so I could go back home easily at night. It makes traditional sense for a Chinatown to have a night market and might lower the rising dangers of San Francisco nights. -Andrew(Liang Fu) Wu Today we went biking around Stanley Park, a nice breather away from all the fatigue built up from this week, really relaxing. The seawall had amazing sights that does not include only the sea but the people that we passed by also. We saw fishermen and beach goers having fun and doing what they were doing. During our ride we also found a pineapple shaped rock with a sole and lonely tree on top of the rock. I noticed that on our ride there were some parts of the bike trails that were elevated away from the pedestrian walk train. This gave me the idea that not only was it used to separate the pedestrians from the bikers but also prevent bikers from merging onto the bike trail from the pedestrian trail. This idea might be of benefit to our open space infrastructure because of its prevention of merging that has a potential in causing harm or injuring the pedestrian or motorist. Elevated bike trails also force bikers to remain on the trail and keeps them away from pedestrians and motorist. It’s a great idea in terms of safety for all users of the street.
After the bike ride we went over to the Vancouver Richmond night market for dinner. There was a lot to eat and to choose from and a lot of stalls to buy last minute souvenirs and gifts. The thing I liked most about the Night Market was its wide selection of cute items to buy. The benefits of a night market (if we ever had one) was that any type of generation young to old is able to enjoy it. During our roaming time I noticed the night market’s guest weren’t only teens or kids but also adults looking for a great time. Night Markets are a social hub full or independent vendors and fun games attractions. I believe SF has potential for a night market but not a daily or weekly one, monthly should be fine enough. I do know that space is a problem and that we might not have enough budget or funding but all I do know is that SF has a potential, a capability to have a night market. This concludes my seventh and second last day in Vancouver. Thanks for reading! -Aaron Dong Today started like not like any other day on our trip for two main reasons. Reason one is we woke up at a later time and had an adequate amount of sleep. Reason two is that we actually had a nice breakfast together or more like brunch at a Yum Cha place. The day was of a more chilled one because we had nothing intense going on until 3 o’clock, so we hanged out in the nearby mall and had time to cool down and relax. We also caught up on our “observation toolkit” which has been highly neglected throughout the trip.
Anyways, at around 3 o’clock, we arrived at the outskirts of Stanley Park to get ready to go biking around the park. We rented some nice bikes and had nice bike ride around the park, but not really the park. We actually biked around the perimeter of the park because the inside of Stanley Park didn’t have many bike routes that don’t share the road with automobiles. It would have been very scary to bike along automobiles for some of our youth, so we avoided those roads at all cost. So, with the bike ride, we had great view of the waterfront and also the beach party with the immense public nudity. This seems to similar to ones in San Francisco, but at least, from what i see which is not good for minors is that their city is very liberal. Now, along to the most terrifying part of the trip, the Richmond Night Market. The Night Market … it just takes you in with your wallet and full of happiness and recklessness, but it just pushes you out afterwards with an empty wallet and full of regret. Honestly, I really enjoyed the night market. it was full of life, food, and shops. It seems it helps generate high amount of revenue even though if your stand isn’t popular. I think by having a night market locally can just make a neighborhood new and full of spirit. I believe it’s viable to have a night market in San Francisco, but it depends where in San Francisco. For example, if you have one in SF’s Chinatown, you will a lot of angry seniors who can’t sleep, but local business will have a lot of revenue. I believe having a night market at the Cow Palace is the most viable choice because it had large venue, a lot of parking, and easy accessible public transportation. It can also bring a new spirit to the neighborhood, Visitacion Valley that has been for a long time neglected by our city. Through this, the neighborhood might be actually be known for something fun and great instead of crime and drugs. -David Trang We once again came back to the Olympic village. I really like this place because of the amount of greenery surrounding the area and the benches that are spread around that lets you to just sit down and become mesmerized with the scenery. Today we met with the developers and planners of the Olympic village, Tina and Debrah with special guests Deland and Michael. From what we had learned from Tina and Debrah, the development of many condos around the surrounding area is a conflict that disables the park from expanding a bit more and that people really enjoy being near the seawall and I could understand why. We walked around the village’s premises and talked about the area surrounding it that is currently under development that focuses on expanding the Olympic village. We learned about the history and background development plans of the Olympic village and why certain locations are there.
After the tour we headed over for lunch at one of our youth leader’s uncle’s restaurant at Chinatown. After the lunch we headed over to Makers Lab to construct PRAS otherwise known as Project Related to Augmented Simulation (Name is destined to change overtime.). It’s a box that unfolds into a map where we could make our own scenarios and test children and kids that we present using PRAS as a presentation material. I didn’t expect it would take the whole time to make a box with hinges attached to it but I guess that’s just the influence of a city boy where everything is premade and we had to make PRAS from a scratch. At makers lab, I was able to witness the future coming in steadily with a laser printer. There was a 3D printer but a laser printer is more interesting. All of us had fun making the box and the pieces for it. We also made thank you cut outs for the people we met and had donated to make this trip possible. A huge shout out to those who did! Well this concludes out 6th day in our Vancouver trip, Thanks for reading! -Aaron Dong Olympic village—quite a fascinating name for a concept that often falls in ruins shortly after the Olympic games occur. It’s definitely an honor to host the games, but is it worth it? As with honor comes expense. The money is gone forever, but the pride and commemoration does not last forever. Unfortunately, many cities fear the risk of hosting the olympics which is quite a shame as I love watching them. Speaking of global sports events, the Women’s World Cup(soccer) is occurring right now. I think the event deserves more recognition and awareness and before you say I’m going off track, Vancouver is in fact one of the host cities. That’s how I know about it anyway.. heh.
The Winter Olympics was hosted in 2010 in Vancouver so it’s still too early to foresee the future of Vancouver’s Olympic Village. It is currently in beautiful shape and hopefully it stays that way. Sadly, that might not be the case. Two architectural planners of the Olympic Village gave us a tour, and the park I must say definitely has amazing design and infrastructure. From innovate and creative designs like spinnable chairs and 8-bit playgrounds to practical and efficient designs like the stormwater management system, Olympic Village shows promise as a prominent user-space. Our tour guides did mention, however the gradual decay of maintenance in the park. This seems to be a frequent trend in Vancouver actually. There’s a lot of fascinating spaces that are beautifully designed, but there is a lack of maintenance to maintain the beauty. One more thing about the Olympic Village. There is a resting area with huge sparrow statues that we spent most of our time reflecting and writing at. One notable observation that I had is during the noon, as the sun shined with its greatest prominence. There are two sides to the resting area, one in direct contact with sunlight and one that is shaded from the sunlight. Curiously, everybody at the resting area sat in the area directly below the sunlight and not in the shade. Perhaps Vancouver doesn’t get much sunlight, but there was plenty of sunlight during the week that we went. After that, we headed to MakerLabs, an innovative workspace company that transitioned from concept to reality not too long ago. Props to Derek(hopefully I spelled your name right) for quitting his job to pursue his dream of MakerLabs. If you’re reading this, I wish you luck in the future! Alright so on to what we came here for. We too, needed to make our concept into a reality—Project Related to Augmented Simulation(RPAS). You can think Aaron, one of our youth leaders for the brilliant name, I’m still not too sure what it actually means but Aaron probably doesn’t know either. To put it simply, it’s designed to be a detachable wooden box used for Campaign presentation that doubles as a material holder. There were two teams, one to design the box and one to design the models. I worked on the box, and I must admit; it was one of the most painful, yet gratifying experiences that I ever had. We spent hours finding the right wood, maneuvering the laser cutter, screwing the hinges, and hacksawing the screws(long story) but in the end, it was all worth it. The model team created a bunch of cool wooden models, including gifts to funders and donors of the trip. If any of you are reading this, hopefully you enjoy the gifts and thanks for making our trip possible! -David Yi |
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