Sarah wanted a change of scenery today so we took the family to the Aberdeen Centre mall for lunch and for hanging out. Normally, I work from home but sometimes you have to get out of the house. Fortunately, my business allows me to run it from anywhere in the world, as long as I have an Internet connection.
The Aberdeen Centre mall is own by Thomas Fung (no relation to Stephen Fung). I have met Thomas only few times. Extremely driven and super rich, Thomas Fung owns so many businesses, he has trouble keeping track of them. I remember when I was in the printing business and made him a couple of rubber stamps. When I went to give it to him I asked why he didn’t get this own print shop to make the stamps? His reply was, “I own a print shop?” Thomas runs his empire under the Fairchild Group of companies.
The Aberdeen Centre is a beautiful mall. It was in fact, the first “Asian mall” in Canada. Built in the early 1990’s, the mall was designed as an one-stop shopping spot with Asian themed retail stores, herbal tea shops, restaurants, cinema and bowling alley as well as continuous weekend entertainment. The mall was named after Hong Kong’s famous tourist harbour – Aberdeen.
Then in 2000, Thomas did the unthinkable. He kicked out all the tenants, tore down the entire mall and replaced it with a new Aberdeen Centre that was three times bigger than the original! The new Aberdeen Centre opened in December 2003 with just a handful of stores, including North America’s first Diaso.
Today, Aberdeen Centre is one Vancouver’s pre-eminent cosmopolitan shopping destination. The main lobby area has a fountain that sprays a water show every half hour and the third floor food court has free wireless, which is where this blog post is being made from.
Aberdeen is a really nice place to relax and work. Sarah is updating Sally’s blog from the other laptop and Sally and her grandparents are enjoying the water show. It’s time like these that I realize just how much freedom the Internet has afforded me.