Monthly Archives: October 2014

Vistaprint

Yay! the cards for the Vancouver Chocolate Club is here! It was for a discount (as they usually do) and with free shipping promo, came to about $16 with taxes for 100 cards, colour printed on both sides in matte. The sides of the cards were black in some parts which was a slight disappointment. Not sure if they were part of a design from another card that these cards were cut from, or that the black from the back side spills onto the side as the cards are being cut.

If you’re looking for cheap but decent business cards, give Vistaprint a try!

idearabbit-vistaprint1Front and back of business cards

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Little black ink on the sides of the cards. Yes, minor but any designer would take note and if it were a profitable/corporate company paying big bucks, this would not be acceptable. However, those projects would likely be done on a press which this could easily be avoided.idearabbit-vistaprint4

I was rushed, and I did make an error. The right hand one is the first one I ordered. I forgot about the bleeds! So stupid of me! Fail as a designer T_T… I redid the file and sent in a brand new order (myself paying for the second batch of course). The ‘preview’ of Vistaprint is a bit basic and crude, sometimes a bit confusing. You can’t really tell the problem on the back, but on the front, you can clearly see that the url is way to close to the bottom. White space is a bit tight on everything though not disastrous. Still with the designer pride, I got the left one which is what it is suppose to look like. Because I noticed the error right away and reordered, the two orders arrived in the same box, eliminating two trips to the UPS store for pickup.idearabbit-vistaprint3

Dragon Chinese Restaurant

Dragon Chinese Restaurant on UrbanspoonI and my friend went to Calgary for the long weekend, and she invited me to her family’s dim sum. Located on the second floor in a two-storey building in downtown, they said it opened less than an year ago. There aren’t any free parking (like in Vancouver) and prices are outrageously high. For the first hour, it’s $4, and any additional is $4.25.

idearabbit-dragonchinese

It was around 11am on a Friday, so it was pretty empty. (though after reading some reviews, it seems it might always be like that…could be the expensive parking). From the outside it doesn’t look like much, but inside, it was nicely decorated, and fairly clean.

Since our family was invited to my friend’s family/relative’s dim sum, I didn’t get a chance to take photos of the food as I thought it was inappropriate of taking photos of what seemed to be around 20 dishes for 10 of us. We left most of the ordering up to them, which was good since they knew more about dim sum than us.

Some of the dishes that were ordered:
Seafood Congee (was very good – I think my mom really liked it)
many different types of dumplings
Steamed Pork Dumpling (Siu Mai)
Shrimp Dumpling (Ha Gao)
Eggplant stuffed with Shrimp Mousse
xiaolongbao (didn’t have the ‘juice’ that usually explodes which was a bit of disappointment)
vegetable noodle
Shanghai noodle
Deep Fried Taro Dumpling
BBQ Pork Rice Roll
Scallop and Shrimp Dumpling was beautifully presented. Looked like a jewel.
Shrimp Rice Roll
any many more!

We were all stuffed with lots of leftovers to take home. Despite having 10 of us, two were young kids who were more interested in playing games on their phones than eating, so hence the leftovers. The food wasn’t too salty or didn’t seem to be loaded with MSG and was served hot.

Overall, the service was good, the food was very tasty. I can’t really comment on how much it cost as our family was treated, but do recall seeing the noodles were $12.95 which is a bit higher than some of the other dim sum I’ve been to, especially since they were both without meat. I would like to come back again if I’m in Calgary in the future, though cost of parking is a problem. It would be best to carpool or take transit – which isn’t that great compared to Vancouver’s.

 Taste: carrotcarrotcarrotcarrot    Price for Value: carrotcarrotcarrot

Atmosphere:  carrotcarrotcarrot   Service:  carrotcarrotcarrot
Location: carrotcarrot

Corner 23 萬巒豬腳

Corner 23 萬巒豬腳 on UrbanspoonA typical Taiwanese bubble tea restaurant. The interior was spacious and decor was nice. We had actually come all the way to try out the dessert place a few shops down, but they were closed, so we walked into Corner 23 instead. Service was extremely slow even though the restaurant was pretty much empty and there were more than necessary number of staff. The table next to us came later than us but their orders were taken as we twiddled our thumbs and waited more. I only wanted dessert, but they only had this Mango Cheesecake which was not a cake, but a pudding. I didn’t want that or anything else, so Sheepie had one of the bubble tea to go.

Ok, so I didn’t eat any of the food, but the service and attitude wasn’t all that great. They weren’t friendly or welcoming at all. I wouldn’t return unless my friends insisted.
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 Taste: N/A   Price for Value: N/A

Atmosphere:  carrotcarrotcarrot   Service:  carrot
Location: carrotcarrotcarrot