The First Ever Dot Com Scooter Gang!

After the great Segway Crash of 2008, we were unsure if a Dot Com Scooter Gang Meetup was a good idea. Although it is clear that Michael Kwan and Segways do not mix, perhaps he’ll fare better on a scooter!

Tomorrow, the Dot Com Crew will be renting some scooters and terrorizing Vancouver. Initially, during the Dot Com Pho Reunion Edition, which was a result of our Dot Com Cease Fire, we weren’t sure if John Chow would come out and join in on the unification activities. Even though we don’t work nine to five in a corporate environment, it is still important to have team building activities. With the help of Dot Com Historian, Carl Nelson, we were able to pry John from his MacBook Pro to enjoy some fresh air, sunshine, and some EPIC Hilarity.

If your Dot Com Lifestyle allows you to get away tomorrow, please join us! We’ll be renting scooters from the location below:

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We’ll be rolling out from CycleBC Rentals shortly after 10:30 AM. I will of course not be renting a scooter because Happy Scooter would be very upset if I rode off on a Yamaha BWS and still hasn’t forgiven me for riding off on a Segway. It’s kinda funny how initially, everyone kind of laughed at the idea of me zipping around on a scooter. Heck, I laugh at myself zipping around on a scooter. However, it seems that Happy Scooter has managed to become part of the Dot Com Crew afterall and will probably end up leading the Scooter Gang and definitely avoiding Kwanye as Scooter seems to have an allergy towards carnage.

If you’re available and want to come out, please Twitter Me or leave a comment and we’ll try not to ride off without you. The cost of the rental is $69.00 for the whole day (till 5:00 PM) plus $6.00 for insurance. All you need to rent is a credit card and a valid Class 5 drivers license. Since there will be a few of us, try to get there a few minutes before 10:30 to start filling out the paperwork and stuff so we can be on the road as soon as possible.

Tenatively, our route will take us out to UBC, Stanley Park, and then back into Vancouver. We should hopefully be back at the rental place before five to get our damage deposits back. However, for some of us (Oh Kwanye…), those damage deposits may need to be left behind.  See you tomorrow!

Dot Com Pho - The Reunion Edition

This week’s Dot Com Pho was a special one. Not only have we seemed to have put aside our differences with a Dot Com Pho Cease Fire, but we’ve welcomed an old friend back from overseas. Carl Nelson returns from Hong Kong to join us for a bowl of noodles and conversation about the origins of Dot Com (fill in the blank). We also had a special visit from Maria Andros the Video Marketing Queen, and we even celebrated our first ever Dot Com Pho Birthday with Qasim Rasi. Of course, our favourite evil CH.I.M.P (watch the video) John Chow is also here to join in the fun.

Returning from the dead this week is Gary Ng (aka iPhone Gary) and Greg Morgan (BCM Greg). Of course, we have our favourite Segway Crashing freelance writer, Michael Kwan and networking Diva, Bonnie Sainsbury rounding out this week’s Dot Com Pho. This week’s Dot Com Pho took place at Pho Richmond, home of the AAA Meat Pho. We’re afraid to use the word beef because we’re not sure. Enjoy the video!

Next week, Dot Com Pho returns to Vancouver and we put all the heat on iPhone Gary as it will be his choice. He has chosen Congee Noodle House which was supposed to be our location this week, till we had the great Dot Com Pho Cease Fire. I’ll repost directions and details this coming Friday so you don’t get lost. It’s a really great location with big round tables and decent parking for a great venue.

As always, if you’re a restaurant seeking some publicity, you might want to contact me or any one of your favourite Dot Com Pho Celebs and tell us about yourself. As long as you think that you can handle a bunch of rowdies every Saturday from around 12:30 to 3:00, we might bring Dot Com Pho to you. Just make sure you have parking, proximity to transit, and food discounts…or not. We’ll still come if it sounds good.

For all your Dot Com Pho up to date information, please make sure you keep me on your twitter hot list. See you all next week!

Dot Com Pho Cease Fire!

This just in! After over three weeks of what appeared to be a never ending battle with John Chow over his insistence of Dot Com Pho staying in Richmond, I’m happy to report that a cease fire agreement has been reached and the Yes We Shall movement has been an overall success. As part of the reconciliation though, Dot Com Pho will reunite and return to Richmond for this week before heading to different locations across the lower mainland. However, in a surprising turn of events, it will not be going back to Pho Lan.

Now John has maintained that his loyalty is to Pho Lan so I assume that this is only because Mr. Lan has banned him from the restaurant for losing all his customers for three weeks. I think we’ll all stay away from there for a while as Mr. Lan can get pretty upset. You won’t like him when he’s angry. The last time he got pissed at John, he had to runaway to Shanghai for a month

This week’s location will be at a new Pho restaurant in Richmond known as, funny enough, Pho Richmond. It’s part of Continental Plaza, but I’ve not been able to locate any address information or a phone number. I think they only take cash as well. Allegedly, this place serves AAA Beef in their Pho, but with the beef riots in Korea over American Beef, I’m sure that they just got the shipments redirected to this restaurant.

Here’s the map that John gave me…

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I know. It’s pretty vague. However, if you run into problems finding the place, please call 604.649.4342 for a unit number and a more detailed explanation tomorrow. Parking is typical downtown Richmond, though it does exist. For some reason, my people don’t like to carpool so every spot will be parked by a single car with a single driver. This means it will be chaos and you’ll be circling for a while so make sure you come out early. You can park a block away and walk over. Please try not to get run over during your walk and make sure you look out for those drivers in welding masks. They can’t see you.

Next week, it will be iPhone Gary’s choice as we will be heading to Congee Noodle House in Vancouver. I’ll repost my detailed map and directions next Friday.

It’s been a tough battle, but it looks like it has worked out and Dot Com Pho will be coming to different neighborhoods across the lower mainland after tomorrow. Most importantly, we’re together again, stronger than ever. See you in Richmond!

Dot Com Pho - The Just Pho Phun Edition

The only thing that is dead is Elvis because Dot Com Pho is more alive than ever! This week we hit Cuu Long Vietnamese Restaurant in Vancouver at the suggestion of Greg Morgan. Unfortunately, Greg decided to take off to the Pemberton Festival so that he could endure the longest traffic backup ever and enjoy the downpour of rain in this outdoor venue. As a test for the 2010 Olympics, I think based on the traffic problems, this one is a fail and they have less than two years to fix it.

Attending this week was Michael Kwan, Michael “FATAL1TY (6)” Yurechko, Tyler Ingram and Leo Chiang. Apologies for the wait in getting the video up this week but the FLIP Mino ran out of recording time so we substituted Tyler’s Canon ELPH in to record the Gadget of the Week segment. Despite the fact that the video was done yesterday, you can’t have a Dot Com Pho without a “Gadget of the Week” so I had to wait on the final cilp from Tyler so we could post it. Anyhow, Tyler finally got the clip to me today and here’s our July 26th “Just Pho Phun Edition” of Dot Com Pho…
 

So how as the Chow? Well, the Chow wasn’t as good as Cambie (Vancouver) Vietnamese Restaurant or Pho Thai Hoa, but still better than Pho Lan in many respects. The coffee drippers actually worked and the spring rolls weren’t obliterated in the fryer. Overall happiness still goes to the Happy Pho Guy, Brian (Bryan?) at Cambie (Vancouver) Vietnamese Restaurant. Pho Thai Hoa is still my favourite for the Chow.

We’d still like to invite any restaurants or eateries that think they can deal with us to contact me so that we can come check you out one of these Saturdays. All you have to do is put up with us for an afternoon, maybe give us some great food discounts (I’m Chinese. Have to ask.), and you might end up with a bunch of publicity from grateful local bloggers. Keep in mind, you need to be close to transit, offer parking and be centrally located in the Greater Vancouver Area. If you’re Scooter friendly, that’s a bonus.

For next week, who knows where we’ll be. It could be Pho, it could be Dim Sum, it might even be Tandori. If you want to keep up on Dot Com Pho Developments, make sure you add me to Twitter. If you want to come out, you just need to let us know by commenting on the secret pho location announcement on Friday or by tweeting me so that we can save you a seat. See you all next week!

Tomorrow’s Secret Dot Com Pho Location - Cuu Long Restaurant

After a WonderPho Experience at Cambie (Vancouver) Vietnamese Restaurant, the Dot Com Crew moves on to a new location in Vancouver. If you missed out on the drama, much controversy has swirled around the mass exodus to Vancouver from Richmond. John Chow calls this a Dot Com Split after the failure of the Richmond meet, which attracted an inflated seven people versus the true five that attended the WonderPho Edition. There was no video to prove the numbers, but we have it on good authority that John counted immediate family members in this total, which puts the real numbers at three. Since John often goads me about getting my Dot Com Pho videos up faster, the fact that there was no Richmond Dot Com Pho video is a telling tale of what really happened.

We hope John reconsiders his stubborn protest over a fifteen minute drive to Vancouver (vs a five minute drive within Richmond). Sources do say that there are members of the Chow clan that are equally sick of going to Pho Lan every week. I wonder if the change from Pho Lan to Pho Hoa this week in Richmond was in response to this. However, it was John himself that bitched at us for being disloyal and leaving Pho Lan so we are confused by his own move to Pho Hoa, a chain restaurant in Richmond. Even we won’t venture to another Pho Restaurant in Richmond for fear of retribution from Mr. Lan.

Moving forward, this week’s location has been chosen. Located at the corner of Knight and Kingsway, this restaurant called “Cuu Long” is not far from our first superior Pho experience in Vancouver at Pho Thai Hoa. It is also a B-Line directly from Richmond across the Knight Street bridge so we hope to see John this week so we can put an end to this drama. This location meets our criteria with a central location that is easily accessible by transit and parking should be somewhat improved due to the lack of the next door Dim Sum that Pho Thai Hoa parkers had to contend with and the trendier neighbourhood that Cambie (Vancouver) Vietnamese Restaurant is located.

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If you want to come out this week, all we ask is that you either leave a comment here or Twitter Me so that we can hold down enough seats to take care of everyone. Despite all the drama, John is still a friend and a dot com brother and we’ll always have a seat saved for him.

See you all tomorrow!