A Few Thoughts: 父母和情人的分別-- The difference between parents and lovers

This is something I found in a parenting magazine, don't agree entirely with it because it seems a bit biased, but good to think about, and I guess, from different perspectives it could be right :) I tried to do a rough translation (it's worded way better in Chinese) Hope you enjoy reading it :) 
Copyright to the original person, I don't mean to plagiarize or anything! ^^

1. 父母，是這世界上第一個愛你的人。
Parents, are the first people in this world who will love you.

情人，是這世界上第一個你會愛的人。
A lover, is the first person in this world who you will love.

2. 父母，愛你不因為你的甚麼外在或內在條件影響，他們愛你，只因為愛你。
Parents, love you not because of any outside of inside conditional influences, they love you, because they love you.

情人，愛你通常因為某些原因。可能是你的外貌、或家底、或才華，他們愛你，總因為受某些條件影響。
A lover, usually loves you because of some reason. Maybe it is your appearance, or family background, or charm, they love you, because of some conditional influence.

3. 父母，當突然看不見你的蹤影時，會變得很擔心。
Parents, when they suddenly lose sight of you, become very worried.

情人，當突然找不到你時，會變得很疑心。
A lover, when they suddenly can't find you, become very wary.

4. 父母，當聽見其他父母說很喜歡你時，會覺得很欣慰和自豪。
Parents, when they hear other parents saying the like you, will feel very comforted and proud.

情人，當聽見其他異性說很喜歡你時，會覺得很妒忌和憤怒。
A lover, when they hear a person of the opposite sex say they like you, will feel jealous and frustrated.

5. 父母，會希望供應你一切所需，務求你開心。
Parents, will wish to provide you with everything, hoping you will be happy.

情人，會希望你供應她一切所需，來討她歡心。
A lover, will wish you can provide her with everything, to make her happy.

6. 父母，是你的老師也是你的監護人。
Parents, are your teachers and your guardians.

情人，是你的玩伴也是你的同路人。
A lover, is your playmate and a like-minded individual.

7. 父母，會盡量抽時間來陪伴你。
Parents, will try their best to find time for you.

情人，會希望你盡量抽時間來陪伴她。
A lover, will wish you can find the time to be with her.

8. 父母，會賺錢來養育你。
Parents, will earn money to support you.

情人，希望你賺錢來款待她。
A lover, will hope you earn money for her to spend.

9. 父母，和你有血緣的關係。
Parents, are bound to you by a blood bond.

情人，和你有肉體的關係。
A lover, is bound to you by a physical bond.

10. 父母，無論發生甚麼事，從來不會考慮換棹自己的子女。
Parents, no matter what happens, never consider to desert their children.

情人，如果發生不愉快事，或許會考慮換一個情人。
A lover, if something unhappy happens, may consider finding another lover.

父母和情人，同樣是我們生命中重要的人，他們的一言一行，部可能影響我們生命中的方向，喜怒哀樂的轉移，不過，愛情通常出現得較為澎湃，引致很多人重視情人多於父母。甚至在愛情遭遇波折時，毫不理會父母的感受，就自顧自地去做傻事了，只留下可憐的父母，在悲痛地承受這結果。Parents and lovers, both are very important people in our lives, their every move and word, may change our life's direction, no matter happiness, anger, sadness, excitement-- however, love usually happens rather like a wave, making many people consider love between lovers more important than the love for their parents. Perhaps during times of turmoil in a relationship, without caring about our parents' feelings, will do stupid acts, leaving our poor parents, to painfully suffer our consequences.

情人，是一種暫借的關係。父母，是一種終生的聯繫。A lover, is a momentary relationship. Parents, are a lifelong connection.

-- I cropped a bit off the back, started going onto different ideas :)

Munchie Adventure: KYO 月見, Vancouver

So, I went to an AYCE restaurant with my family a while ago, saw the ad and decided it was worth trying. I don't think they had AYCE all the time, this is probably new.

Restaurant: Kyo Korean BBQ and Sushi House
Location: 2993 Granville St., Vancouver, B.C.
Cuisine: Japanese, Korean
Price Range: $5-15 (A-la-carte) or $13.99- Lunch, $23.99- Dinner (+$1.00 for weekends and holidays)
Website: http://kyobbq.com/main.php 
Date of Visit: February 25, 2012

Interior.
Photo credits to Sunny

Atmosphere: 3/5
Staff/service: 4/5
Food variety: 3.75/5
Food quality: 3.75/5
Buck worthy? 3.75/5

I went for the lunch AYCE, but there is also an a-la-carte menu offered. It was a gorgeous sunny day (a rarity!!), and I sat by the window... which meant sun on my face all through the meal. I think they need to install blinds because that would've improved my experience so much. When we first got there, it wasn't very busy, so the food came very quickly and the servers were always there for us. However, as it got busy, the food orders took longer and servers often forgot our requests.

Clockwise from top left: Goma-ae, bean sprouts, house salad,
sunomono

 Appetizers!!
- We stopped ordering the goma-ae after we discovered ohitashi (spinach in a soy sauce-based broth). I found the ohitashi a bit salty, but it wasn't as saucy as the goma-ae, which was good. The spinach was cooked well, since it wasn't too soft, it still had a bit of crunch to it :)
- Next, the bean sprouts, they were marinated in seasame oil and salt, very ordinary, nothing special about it.

Ohitashi

- House salad tasted good, but the lettuce was in huge chunks (seems like they didn't bother to separate the leaves), I liked the cherry tomato though, added a nice touch.
- Sunomono was just sunomono, no tako or ebi. The vinegar was a bit overwhelming, they could've diluted it a bit I think.

Left: chicken   Right: beef

BBQ!! The meat came raw, and I was really excited about the BBQ part, although they only had 3 items on the BBQ menu (pork, chicken, beef). It was marinated with a sweet soy sauce but the meat was cut a bit thin/small for the BBQ rack they had (the holes were too big and the meat kept falling through). Otherwise, it was good.

See how big the holes were? ><

There was also special BBQ soy sauce at the table we could use. (They gave us two plates so we could have our sushi soy sauce and BBQ soy sauce ^^)

Salmon sashimi was thinner than the normal huge pieces you get from other AYCE places, but then again, you get 8 pieces per person, so that made up for it. I actually liked the smaller size, made it easier to eat. It was fresh, and if you can see, there's a few pieces of spicy salmon sashimi tucked behind the romaine lettuce. It wasn't actually that spicy, again it was with the sweet soy sauce base (only spicy this time).

Left to right: dynamite roll, California roll, salmon maki,
Alaska roll

We only ordered a few of each roll to try it out first, and it wasn't that bad. I personally don't like seasame seeds on my rolls (problem of texture haha), so that kinda ruined part of it.
- The dynamite roll was small, and only had the shrimp in it, which made it less filling than the normal ones with crab meat in it as well (which is a good thing!).
- California roll could've had more avocado in it, and some cucumber, since it was mainly packed with imitation crab.
- Salmon maki was typical, nothing special about it
- Alaska roll was California roll topped with a piece of salmon with some seasame. It wasn't bad, a good size. There was also a bit of unidentifiable sauce on it, tasted like soy sauce but sweeter, maybe a teriyaki sauce?

Top: Vegetable yakisoba
Bottom: Pork gyoza

Some hot stuffs :)
- Vegetable Yakisoba: Noodles were chewy but I felt there was too much cabbage. Flavoring was ideal, tastes like the yakisoba you normally order at Japanese restaurants.
- Gyoza: a bit disappointing, they were a bit cold when they arrived and not crunchy on the bottom :( At least they were all separate and not glued in a line like the ones we usually get from AYCE places xD

- Zaru soba: really liked the small portion size, tasted good, the noodles were a bit on the soft side

- Edamame: You can probably see the salt grains...didn't help the beans inside, so I felt it was a bit of a waste. Slightly overcooked-- the pod was a bit mushy, so the beans were sometimes hard to get out.

Top row: chopped scallop sushi, inari sushi
middle row: grilled salmon sushi, tuna tataki sushi, salmon sushi
bottom row: salmon sushi

The sushi!! :D They had a special selection of sushi, some of which you don't normally see at AYCE places. Good sizes, not too big and rice to topping ratio was proportionate.
- chopped scallop: the scallops were fresh, and a good amount (wasn't overwhelming the rice and seaweed)
- Inari: my dad tried this, and he said it was a bit too sweet
- grilled salmon: this had a light miso sauce on top, which complimented the salmon. The salmon was torched on the top, so the bottom was still raw, which made it so tender and "smooth" :)
- tuna tataki (or grilled tuna... couldn't figure out which one it was xD): very good, the miso sauce worked well, and the tuna wasn't sour at all (like other places where tuna usually has this sour taste to it) and the tuna was fairly fresh, since it wasn't mushy
- salmon: salmon was fresh, but there wasn't anything particularly special about it

Left: Agedashi tofu   Right: zuchinni and yam tempura

Mmmm deep fried not-so-good-for-your-health stuff :D
- zuchinni: good, not too much oil was stuck on it and the batter was light, zuchinni wasn't overcooked :)
- yam (I didn't try it, but my mom said it wasn't that good)
- Agedashi tofu: didn't look too pretty, but it was ok:) might've let it soak in the tempura sauce for a bit too long though. There were a few hard batter bits, stuck to my teeth ><

- tonkatsu!! I love tonkatsu, and this was made well, but this was ONE order, which seemed like too big of a portion for one order...>< batter was light and the pork was juicy and tender

- spicy salmon cone: good proportion of salmon to rice in these cones, tastes exactly like the spicy salmon sashimi but with rice and seaweed :P

- salmon teriyaki: waaay too saucey-- my dad decided that grilling his sashimi was better than ordering this...

- miso soup was nothing special, but I really liked the bowl and how they gave us a spoon :) Although when it got busy, there were no more spoons :(

A picture of the order list, there's three columns, so you can order from the same sheet three times before you need another one, saving the environment one row at a time :D

My brother decided BBQ meat and ohitashi was good for me, so here we have it, sunshine+BBQ beef+ohitashi, it was really good :)

Ah, the jello-candy (harder and chewier than normal jello) which took forever to get. But all worth it. We had to ask the server multiple times to get hold of some, and he finally got us a bowl of it-- it was really chewy and mainly green, which I really liked :D My parents really enjoyed it too because it wasn't too sweet.

So overall, this was a positive experience, I was so stuffed afterwards and content. Food was really good, staff were friendly, and it was a gorgeous day.
A few things that could've improved my experience would be:
- blinds for the windows so the sun isn't on me all meal long
- lighten up the MSG (I was so thirsty afterwards but was so full it hurt to drink more water)
- and parking... the spots were really tight, or maybe because there was a Hummer parked next to our car :P There weren't a lot of spots underground either, but they did say there is more free parking in the street behind the restaurant (about a block or two away).

Until next time~~^^

Munchie Adventure: JB Malaysian Cuisine 我來也, Burnaby

Brought my car in for an oil change one day and was in the Metrotown area, so under my aunt's recommendation, went to a tiny little restaurant called JB Malaysian. It wasn't actually that close to Metrotown, about 3-4 blocks away (if I remembered right), and tucked away behind HSBC (as I was walking to it).


Restaurant: JB Malaysian Cuisine
Location: 5212 Kingsway, Burnaby
Cuisine: Malaysian
Price range: less than $15 per dish for lunch
Date of visit: February 22, 2012

Atmosphere: 2/5
Staff/service: 2/5
Food variety: 2.5/5
Food quality: 2.75/5
Buck worthy? 3.75/5

I have to admit, I might be a bit biased because of the restaurant setting, it looked very old-fashioned (a little dirty-looking) inside, and not a lot of tables. When I went, there were two tables with people, and about 5 empty ones. The server looked very insincere, and her attitude showed it too, as if she didn't want to be there. She told us to sit anywhere, but none of the tables farther away from the door (it was windy and cold, so I didn't want to sit right by the door) looked available. We ended up clearing off a table with newspapers (ourselves!) and finally sat down. She brought us tea, which tasted funny-- there was this weird taste to it that I can't quite describe. But when she refilled our tea, I guessed why it tasted funny. Instead of using a teapot to refill our tea, she had this small plastic measuring cup (the 250mL kind), and took three trips to fill all our cups (there were three of us). I didn't mind that too much, but it looks bad, and she never said excuse me or anything when she just pushed between my parents to fill the tea... rather rude if you ask me.

Ok, that was just a lot of complaining about things that shouldn't be the highlight of this page. The food. We didn't know what to order, so we just ordered what we saw the other people were having. There were lunch specials and normal size versions of the dishes, so we ordered from the lunch menu, since it was a little cheaper.

First dish that came, Singaporean Laksa ($7.50):

 This wasn't anything special, you have your shrimp, tofu puffs, fish balls, squid, and noodles in the curry soup. It was a bit on the spicy side (as you'll come to know I can't handle spicy ^^") This turned out to be the best thing we ordered, but it was only mediocre.

Next was the Hainan Chicken ($7.50):

Glad I got a picture in before the rice collapsed-- which usually isn't a good sign. The rice itself was rather broken up, and wasn't cooked very well. The chicken was ok, but seemed like it had been there for a while. The meat was too tender-- almost to the point of over-tenderized. Taste was ok, accompanying carrots and daikon were too sour though.

Then came the Penang Fried Kway Teow ($10):

It didn't taste like the Kuitui one would get at Cantonese restaurants, this one had a soy-sauce base, and there were prawns, pork, fish sticks, scallions, carrots, egg, and bean sprouts with the flat rice noodles. This was ok, except a bit on the oily side.

Most memorable and enjoyable thing at this restaurant? The music in the background. They were playing old songs from probably the 60-70s ;) Until next time~ (sorry if this sounded very negative, but I'm trying to be truthful of my view ;D)