January 8, 2007
Happy New Year!
Ooph, welcome to 2007!
Here's the fancy monthly update. Actually, I have a valid excuse because of course, I have been in England yay!
My immigration medical seemed to go without any hitches. Except perhaps the fact that I spent $250 on a guy prodding my stomach, an x-ray and a urine test. In all honesty I can think of better ways.
The flight to England was as horrendous as ever, actually, since I've never flown back from Canada I am simply comparing it to any flight ever. I hate flying, not for the traditional "oh god the wings are going to fall off" reasons either. Here's why:
1. It costs a fortune, there is no way of saving money.
2. You are invariably stuck for any number of hours in an uncomfortable cramped position next to a fat stinky dude.
3. THEY BLOODY CHARGE FOR EXTRA LEG ROOM! Bear with me and try to consider any other situation where that sort of charge is accepted. Answer: NEVER. "Hi welcome to The Bear Pub, would you like to sit by the window?", "Yes please!", "Okay that will be an extra $50", "...".
4. The food is generally appalling.
5. The entertainment is appalling.
6. They fully expect you to check in approximately a month before you flight. "Oh great! I can spend some quality time in the fascinating departure lounge and go into WHSmiths!"
7. I really could go on but I'll not.
So anyway, the lesson learnt here is don't fly budget. Ever.
After getting over the jetlag we made a trip to Oxford to see Joel, a few drinks and a bout of unpleasant toilet trips later and we went home ready for Christmas via Woodstock and Blenheim Palace, which is as beautiful as ever.
Christmas Day and its following activities blew by as quick as one might expect, over-consumption of chocolate, mince pies, jigsaw puzzles and all the usual festivities. Most notable moment was Dad consuming an entire block of butter that he believed to be a piece of soft cheese.
After all the fun and eating was over we went to London to stay in my sisters new apartment in Richmond which an only be described using obscenities so I'll refrain and tell you that it's beautiful and I am jealous. Usual quick-fire tourist stuff, Tate Modern (we didn't get to do the slides, boo), walk along the South Bank, Covent Garden, a brief and upsetting visit to Oxford St and then the much more pleasant Carnaby Street then back home for New Years.
New Years was spent at home, I cooked a rather rushed and odd Moroccan meal and we lazed about.
The last few days of the trip were spent at home being lazy and it was thoroughly enjoyable after what felt like an entire trip of rushing about. The flight home was memorable as a kick in the teeth, 25 hours door to door, bliss.
That's about it. Whistler is blanketed under feet of snow, Sarah arrives on Wednesday and I guess I have to go back to work at some point because they will be undoubtedly missing me.
Buy my stuff: Ebay
Oh I added a bunch of photos to Flickr in the link above.
Posted by Mark at 2:17 PM | TrackBack
November 22, 2006
Of Montreal
Woah neglected blog. Ok a 3 week update in several short paragraphs follows, you may pause for breath at any point.
I went to Montreal! The trip down was a nightmare, I found out that it's basically impossible to get to Vancouver airport for 9am using public transport, which is when my flight departed of course. So I decided I would splash out at the Holiday Inn Richmond, travel down the night before on the Greyhound and utilise the hotels shuttle facilities in the morning. Some tool then decided to have an accident on the Sea to Sky highway. This 1-lane super highway (they're working a LOT to widen it for the olympics) is a veritable death trap, even more so in the Winter and it's not unusual for a crash to close the entire road for several hours. Good if it happens early in the day and you want a Vancouverite-free day on the mountain not so if you want to actually travel.
I'm dubious as to the extent of the accident on this occasion but Greyhound decided it would be better if they took us back to Whistler (after getting to Squamish, an hour away) and tried again later. We did that and drove straight through, no sign of any accident, now you see why the scepticism. I got into Vancouver at about 11pm, on Halloween, itself an interesting experience, navigated the public transport system and got to the airport at 1am, it seems Vancouver airport isn't much of a 24-hour sort of place, infact the only flights that go out between 1am and 7am are to Hong Kong so the place is deserted, everything is closed, and it's a pretty depressing place. I managed to grab a couple of hours of drool fueled sleep on a sofa in the freezing cold international departure lounge.
Initial sleepy opinions of Montreal weren't good, rudely greeted by a taxi driver trying to charge us $10 for a 2 minute (awkward to walk) cab ride, and generally the abundance of French people didn't do much to fix things. Anyway, the primary reason for going was all I really needed and after catching up on some sleep and being shown round I started to enjoy things a bit more, so much so I am undecided as to whether I like it more than Vancouver, which is a pretty big thing to say. It has lots of culture, pretty buildings, a fun young vibe, great food and it's literally massive.
While there we went to a couple of shows; Final Fantasy w/ Bell Orchestre and The Album Leaf, both of which were excellent, it bites not seeing any live music at all. Various other events included but were not limited to; eating, shopping, watching the entirity of season one Prison Break, eating, working, lounging around, eating. The highlight was of course the company, I always enjoy hanging out with myself... things continue to go excellently with Robyn, I can spend days on end without getting sick of her, continually be entertained by her quirks and it helps that I can convince her to eat as often as I find the need (which is often).
I partook of the famous Montreal smoked meat sandwich, which I have to say, is terribly overrated. It was good but I honestly expected someone to come and put the greatest meaty delight ever in my mouth *cough* but it was only really comparable to the awesome salt beef bagels from Brick Lane. Again, the poutine was nothing to write home on your blog about but they do know how to make a good breakfast.
All in all the trip was great, spending time with Robyn was as much fun as ever, her housemates were fun, Montreal was above all expectations, I spent an absolute fortune replenishing my tiny wardrobe, ate massive amounts (you may have noticed the several food comments so far in this entry) and generally relaxed. Another 3 weeks of sheer awesome that I'd never of experienced had I not come out here, a move which is continually being looked upon as the greatest idea ever conceived, after giraffes.
A rather familiar tale occured on the way home. Apparently it's impossible to get public transport from an international airport, to a world-renowned ski resort after 8pm. That is, they decided not to run any buses to Whistler after 8pm because of road closures for the aforementioned upgrades (despite the fact that the closures happen betwen 2am and 5am). It is literally the most ridiculous thing ever encountered, after giraffes. Anyway, another dozy night on my favorite homeless, should that be travel-less, sofa in Vancouver was all I needed to put me in a great mood for work the next day. Actually I didn't go to work so it didn't make much difference but still...
Additionally, my Mac came which excited Robyn no end, well, as soon as she realised how awesome it was at least. I'm still in the process of getting everything set up so I can stop using my PC but I must say I absolutely love it. The ability to run Windows helps, there's not limits on the software availability like I thought there would be and it's just so intuitive.
My snowboard is also in my presence. I shall take a few photos and upload them shortly. It's as pretty as a pony even though my bindings don't quite match the colour as well as I'd hoped. Still, I'm going to use the old rock board for a few more weeks while the base builds up.
The house is getting a little more set up. Ron acquired some furniture while I was away and set up a Christmas tree and lights which makes the place seem a lot more homely, I'm slowly getting used to living here which is odd since I've paid 2 rent cheques already! We still need to sort out a bit of stuff but we'll get fully settled sometime in the new year.
Whistler opened last Saturday to a absolutely collosal snowfall, a huge storm hit from Alaska dumping 10 feet on us over the course of 2 weeks, making the snowiest November on record, it's apparently awesome conditions, not that I'd know because I still haven't picked up (note: paid for) my pass. Hopefully I will resolve this minor concern this week and go up at the weekend. Blackcomb opens tomorrow but I'm simply too far behind with work to take any time off at the moment. I'll grab some photos of the lovely piles of snow outside the house sometime too.
It's still snowing...
Posted by Mark at 9:06 PM | TrackBack
October 22, 2006
Magic Erasers suck...
...don't believe the hype, it's no Cillit Bang (Easy-off Bam??)
Posted by Mark at 5:44 PM | TrackBack
September 29, 2006
Ikea!
I had a super-fun (tm) trip to Vancouver this week where I managed to rack up 300km, visiting Richmond and Coquitlam in search of various furniture and textiles. Anyway after a vast amount of fun unpacking a million boxes, smashing, cutting and bashing my fingers I finally got everything put together. The results are below (my duvet cover is in Montreal...):
Boxes!
Posted by Mark at 8:10 PM | TrackBack
July 20, 2006
Happy Birthday Robyn!
Hope you like the present :-)
Posted by Mark at 9:00 AM | TrackBack
April 1, 2006
Very sleepless in Seattle
So Seattle is Vancouver crashed into Victoria. Nice place but I have to admit Whistler has really blinkered my life. This is basically the first time I've left a perfect, clean, small town populated by the youthful, energetic seasonaires, the rich sophisticated visitors and illusive locals and I must admit the number of angry looking individuals, weird hobos talking to themselves and general bustle and hustle (I had to walk within 10 yards of someone else today!) is kind of overwhelming.
Sirens, trucks, ghetto blasters (who knew that we were back in the 90's and people actually walked around towns with these blowing in their ears, I hope the life of D-sized batteries has improved over the last decade) is really distracting. The drive down here was a real test of my willpower, I wanted to read every sign I passed, look at the inhabitants of every car, Whistler has literally made me lose sense of the bigger picture. And to be honest, it's nice. In the last 6 months I've never once felt threatened, never kept my eyes open walking around at night and actually miss the place already.
I scored about 2 hours sleep last night (after 5 hours driving) due to the snore-lord Mark. Earplugs, pah. Two pillows glasped around my head, pah. To make up for it today was food-action packed. We scored crumpets for breakfast and fish and chips for lunch which pretty much fulfilled the biggest bits of England I've missed since being here (family and friends excluded, of course) and also fulfills the "what I had for lunch" part of this diary.
I musn't forget to extend thanks to US immigration for relieving me of $6 on the border for a finger print scan and photograph. The prices of stuff around here is incredible in comparison to "home", however, and I'm going to stock up big time on pharmicuticals and other various crap.
Moving along (I'll have more on Seattle and Vancouver soon), I got my files back from the lawyer, the one I was going to update about. I'll reserve total judgement until I see whether I get a visa of not but it's been quite difficult... So far I've told my contact twice that I was told by one of her colleagues (who you thought she might just get up out of her chair and talk to) that the visa should be processed under "arranged employment" category, she can't seem to grasp it. Then... the documents she has checked over and "amended" have my surname spelt incorrectly in half of them! Edmonston!
Posted by Mark at 9:59 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack