Transferred from my old blog: We are but science geeks

June 7, 2004

Bryan and I took in a night on the town on Friday night. We started out with a good meal at Glowbal in Yaletown (although way over-priced, all kinds of hidden costs, and service staff that won't leave you alone to enjoy your meal in peace). Then we hit the beach with some gelato. And then Bryan got the very bright idea to hit Cloud 9, a revolving bar/restaurant 42 floors above Robson Street.

That was a great idea. We scored great seats by the window and got a fantastic view all over Vancouver, from UBC on the Point Grey Peninsula all the way to Burnaby and the mountains beyond. It was my first time in a revolving restaurant, so I don't know if they're all the same, but this one gave the illusion of revolving by moving the floor around inside the restaurant. The central pillar of the building housed the bathrooms, the bar, elevators etc. It would have been really confusing to work in there, and I realised that when I looked over and realised the bar wasn't in the same place it had been 5 minutes before. As we were sitting at our table, we would revolve past the windows making our way around the building. Here's a tip, don't put your purse down on the window sill, because it will not be there later.

It was about when my second drink arrived when Bryan revealed he had been timing how long it takes to revolve past one window frame. Slightly less than two minutes. From that he started to calculate how many degrees were represented in each window frame, based upon his assumed revolution time of 1 hour. So I went about the calculation a different way by counting windows and dividing the number into 360 degrees. I estimated about 50 windows. But then Bryan and I came out with completely different answers. We decided to ask the waiter how long it takes for the restaurant to make a complete revolution. 1 hour 20 minutes. No wonder we were off in our calculations. Anyway....the calculations went on for about another drink and a half, before we agreed that there were 60 windows at 6 degrees per window.
We are geeks, and we are proud of it.