Much Ado About Everything

Well, today was a nice, sunny day so I thought I might go out for a walk around False Creek. Actually, I figured I could take SkyTrain downtown and go to The Bay store for lunch, then take SkyTrain back to Main Street station and walk around.

What a mistake that was. First, it took me close to half an hour just to get to Broadway station – 10 minutes of waiting for the train, and then the train was moving so slowly it was sickening. And it was of course crowded, even though it had extra cars. Well duh, if you reduce frequency you should at least keep the trains moving at the same speed as usual. Otherwise extra cars aren’t going to help.

So I decided to go to lunch somewhere else. I got off at Broadway station (by this time I should’ve already been in the Bay’s restaurant) and took 99 bus. Of course, I had to wait another 10 minutes (probably a bit more) – God forbid they increase frequency of buses to compensate for crawling SkyTrains. And then – in addition to usual slow moving traffic on Broadway – yet another 10 minutes delay at the Kingsway intersection due to the roadwork they’re doing there (come to think of it, they were doing it last weekend already). I finally got off at Cambie – more construction there though luckily not obstructing the traffic – and went to nearby Cactus Club to get lunch. After that I figured I could go to Visions store to see if they got new Sony XBR2 TVs. Well, I found out the store is not at that location any more (and it’s been barely 5-6 years since it was opened there too) – it’s a Royal Bank branch now. The same branch whose original building was torn down in that construction near Cactus Club I mentioned earlier. Oh well, I went to Best Buy to see if there’s anything new there. Of course, there isn’t. And of course, they keep dumping the old stuff on us – Westinghouse 47″ LCD actually looked great but it was only W1 revision, which people complain about on AVS forums. I suppose Canada is BestBuy’s dumping ground for outdated models. At least the price was somewhat reasonable, though I’m sure it costs far less than that in the States.

Anyhow, I decided against taking a walk because I really didn’t feel like dealing with the SkyTrain again – I figured if I walked to Granville Island, I would have to take the bus to downtown and then SkyTrain again to get home. So I decided to hop on the bus south to get to 41st Ave, then take bus 41 to get home, avoiding SkyTrain.

That was another mistake, of course. I forgot about – you guessed it – more construction. The entire area is under blockade for the rapid transit line construction. At least the traffic wasn’t as slow as in other places – people already got accustomed to construction there and are simply not taking the street in large numbers.

I stopped at Oakridge center mall and got some much needed coffee, then visited local EB store and found Fire Emblem: Sacred Stones for GBA costing $32 which I promptly bought. Then I walked around a bit before taking the bus home. As usual, this bus was overcrowded and extremely slow, stopping at each and every of the insanely numerous stops this line has – even though it’s a very frequent bus, passengers are yet more frequent than that.

In the end I wasted most of my afternoon. I should’ve just stayed at home and watched or played something.