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a particularly cool looking lecture

SNMMI 2013 Annual Meeting Vancouver is now over. (That’s Society for Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging, btw.) Oh how I enjoyed those few days of meeting new people and NOT having to explain what I’m studying.

I thought it was a pretty decent conference. I went to A LOT of different talks. Luckily Victor is about as nerdy as me so I had a friend to hang around with most of the time.


This half dude in the Siemens display freaked me out!! He had stubble! And arm hair! And his eye even twitched a little bit. AHHH! Lesley and I stared at it for quite a long time. First I thought it was a dude lying on his side half in the bed, with his head turned. Lesley thought it was an optical illusion. Then I thought it was actually a corpse (and was quite disturbed). Eventually a Siemens rep said that it was a very expensive model. SO CREEPY!!!!!!!!

Highlights of the conference included:

  • a talk about the effects of the Fukushima nuclear power plant accident on the population and food (apparently they are getting fat from being afraid of going outside, and the food is fine)
  • a really smart lady talking about dental uptake of I-131, which I had never heard about before
  • a session where we got to interpret diuretic renograms with doctors and vote with clickers (the doctors did terribly!!)

  • free dinner out on the patio at Canada Place
  • getting a free dinner from Phillips
  • a lecture about choosing to use or not use CCK in liver studies (aka a lecture that was relevant and not too complex)
  • getting free stuff in the exhibit hall (Lesley even won $50)
  • seeing new camera designs like a chair camera

Lowlights included:

  • hearing that 45% of people will get cancer
  • a talk where the presenter was pretty much eating the microphone
  • some overly technical talks that I couldn’t understand a single word
  • getting depressed because most of the stuff is not available in Canada and probably won’t ever be

It was also cool to bump into lots of techs that I hadn’t seen since being at their hospital for clinical. It was nice to catch up and hopefully they remember me a bit better now come September.

I am so grateful that the conference happened to come to Vancouver, and that it happened when we were still students (so we could go for free!). That was really lucky.

i take this as a sign that i am in the right field

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The Summer Night Market in Richmond opened a couple weekends ago. Scott and I went with Victor and his gf on the Sunday night of the May long weekend. It wasn’t too crowded when we first got there but crowds increased steadily as the evening went on. I recommend going right at 7PM if you’re planning on checking it out sometime this summer!


These little fish only cost $1 and are filled with chocolate, custard or red bean paste. I like the custard one the most. Warning: they are lava hot on the inside!!


Rotato is a night market classic. They are cheaper at the Summer Night Market ($4) compared to everywhere else. We got salt and vinegar this time but I didn’t like it as much as the flavours I tried last year.


I liked Parmesan Garic (lol) and Sour Cream & Onion last year. They must use the exact same type of flavour powders as they do on chips because they taste identical to bags of potato chips. If I have another one I will probably try White Cheese… maybe it will taste like Smartfood popcorn, which I am addicted to.

We also had a kiwi bubble tea with pearls ($5), shrimp lamb and crispy bun skewers (3 for $7), and a duck pocket and dumplings ($5.75). The skewers were excellent and the dumplings were tasty. The duck pocket was dumb because it only had like two tiny strands of duck in the whole thing.

Victor and his gf had all the traditional night market things like bubble waffles, okonomiyaki (japanese pancake) and takoyaki (octopus ball thingies).

I really like the Summer Night Market because it is cheaper than the Richmond Night Market, but now that I’ve been to it twice I think that’s enough. We’ve tried almost all the food there that I would want to try now. Next time I think we’ll go to the Richmond Night Market because even though it is more pricey they have way more interesting food choices.

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Prepare to drool cuz I’m finally ready to blog about Eat! Vancouver 2013!! I feel awful for taking so long. Bad timing with the move and everything.

Anyway Eat! Vancouver is a food convention held in BC Place with booths from tons and tons of companies and restaurants. Nearly every booth gives out samples of their products. There is no need to be tentative, they are super generous with the samples and often encourage you to try every single thing they have!

I took pictures of some of my very favourite things I tried…

This Albert’s Leap blue goat cheese brie was incredibly delicious and I really really regret not buying a wheel. Can someone please get me this for my birthday?? Seriously.

Pistachios are awesome. I definitely went by this booth a few times. :D

This coconut ice cream was reallllllllllllly nice. It had the texture and flavours of normal ice cream with a hit of coconut flavour as well. I loved the salted caramel and Scott loved the strawberry. This is one of the products that got added to our list of “actually want to buy in real life”. So good.

Plenty o’ chocolate samples!

This Oikos truck was giving out really big cups of Greek yogurt with a separate package of topping. You could choose any combination you want. The first day I tried fig yogurt with granola which was very tasty. The next day I got strawberry yogurt with granola and tucked it into my bag to have for breakfast later that week.

Non-artificial ginger ale! These were so spicy in the way ginger can burn. They were delicious and I got a poster with a bunch of alcoholic drink recipes that I totally want to try. I would have bought some at the convention but they weren’t selling! Now I have to track them down in Vancouver.

This booth was for a tea subscription service. The service is pretty expensive but I will definitely say the tea was great. That flapjack one smelled exactly like a pancake breakfast! Lauren and I tried the green tea tropical tea and decided it would taste awesome as a cold drink.

This year Scott and I bought a few tickets so we could try the alcohol section. This is me with a blueberry whiskey drink. Yum. I also tried Fruli (strawberry beer) and Scott tried a few different types of beer. He liked Delirium quite a bit.

I used the rest of the tickets on the chilled avocado soup from Tacofino. It was smooth and spicy and tasty.

Last year Rosemarie and I were really bummed that we missed out on all the cheese seminars. This year we set ALARMS so we wouldn’t miss it! I went once with Lauren and once with Scott! :D

The seminars are super awesome. They give you seven different types of cheeses to try and the dude walks you through tasting each one. He might get you to taste the inside of the brie before the outside, or to smell the cheese etc etc. Super fun.

PS I love cheese.

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If you don’t count the patio our new apartment is smaller than our old apartment, but if you DO count the patio it’s much bigger. We don’t mind the reduced space inside because everything is so much nicer than our old place. I took a few pictures to give you a little tour…

^ The patio is north facing and gets a lot of light in the morning. Our (teeny tiny) plants are thriving! We have no neighbours on the left side yet. Plenty of room for a tent for Rosemarie. :D Still need a BBQ.

^ The living room. We haven’t hung up any of our art yet. I’m scared to put holes into the brand new walls!!

^ Dining… area? I definitely need to clean off that table!! Oops. I think I’m going to put up those three geometric paintings I had above my desk at the old place above the table.

^ The kitchen and pantry. Note the dishwasher!! What a luxury!! We put a desk into the pantry so that if I need to study or Scott needs to do some work we can have a quiet space. We also have lots of shelves for extra food and kitchen stuff that doesn’t fit in the kitchen cupboards, as they are quite small.

^ Bathroom. I haven’t taken a bath yet but I should because the tub is super deep!

^ The bedroom. This is the biggest change from our old apartment. Bye bye big room with big walk in closet. Now the competition for closet space is tougher. I am still winning. :D

Well that’s it! Now you’ve pretty much seen the whole place except for a few cupboards, haha. We’ve been here a couple weeks now and we love it. I’m so grateful that we get to live here. I better get a job in September though otherwise we won’t be doing much else except hanging out here though…

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We finally have internet so I can blog again!

We’ve been REALLY busy for the last week and a half, which was a good thing because I don’t think I could survive without internet for so long if I didn’t have so much stuff to do.

Since the end of school we moved out of our old apartment and into our new place. We cleaned the old place. Went to the food convention twice. Went to Lesley’s house. Visited with Lauren. Went out for drinks. Got my hair cut. Water marbled my nails. Started my summer clinical placement.

Just this weekend I prepared and cooked a porchetta and finally unpacked the last of all our boxes. Lesley is coming over in a bit for patio drinks and Ticket To Ride. I still need to study a bit for knowledge testing tomorrow.

Sooo… lots of blog posts to come! Here are some of the pictures that didn’t fit into any of my other posts…

me on the patio the day we got our keys

when we first got everything moved into our new apartment

at church’s chicken for the first time

sunset view from the balcony

patio laptop and whiskeys

look what Scott found while cleaning the fridge at the old house!!! best surprise ever!!


I’m going to take some apartment pictures RIGHT NOW. :)