Pictures

I feel my blog has been recently lacking in illustration. I apologise. I shall add more pictures (/take more pictures to add) soon. :)

Here's a picture of an awesome mountie (still searching for a real-life (red) one) and a raccoon to make up for being so remiss:



Oh, and I also added one to my Granville Island post, incase any of you had a burning desire to see a new sign.

Gainful(ish) Employment - Woop!

I have a job! Yay :D

Having already turned down one job (which seemed rather ill-advised up until this point) and missed out on Guest Services up at Cypress Mountain, I spent all of Saturday at job fairs for the other two mountains nearby.

I've yet to hear from Grouse. It sounds like it would be a good place to work - they pay better than Cypress and have more advanced skiing than Seymour, but ultimately I'm really pleased I got the job at Seymour. It may be the more 'family friendly' resort, but right at this moment i'm no expert skiier anyway. Mainly I'm pleased because I think the people I'm working with will be really good to work with. I got passed on to them by the Guest Services interviewers who thought I might fit their bill (and that they would have more fulltime work), and what started as an interview ended up being quite a nice chat. I think It's always a good sign when things go that way.

So at some point in the next month (hopefully a couple of weeks) I will take up a position on the Snow School Lessons desk at Mount Seymour. What's more, I've discovered that one of the girls from my flight will also be working there, so there will be another friendly face around to start with :)

Admittedly, the one disadvantage of this job is that I can't start it until it snows, but forecasters are predicting an early, cold wet winter this year, which is not something I usually hope for, but since that =snow, all fingers are crossed. Of course the flip side of the snow thing is that I get complimentary skiing/snow boarding for the whole season and massive discounts on equipment :D I shall keep you posted on my progress therein.

In the mean time I shall be out agency-hunting inforce to fill in some of my now spare time (alongside exploring a bit more, of course).

Some things I didn't know I cared about

There are somethings you really don't appreciate until they're gone.

Cheese. If you'd asked me before I left just how much of a place in my heart cheese had, I would have estimated, 'perhaps a little more of a place than squash, but less of a place than chocolate'. Turns out cheese is an issue I really care about. Cheese here infuriates me for a numbers of reasons (well, mostly two reasons). All cheese is really expensive - we'll come to that in a bit. The bigger problem is that some of the really expensive stuff that's called 'cheese' is some sort of abomination. It's yellow (and not a cheese-colour yellow) and orange (likewise) all mixed together in an illegitimate marriage... in very large blocks. The other main option is 'pizza mozzarella', which is hard and comes in large rectangles. Mozzarella is not hard and shouldn't really come in cuboid shapes... *cheese purist*.

Given such parameters it seems reasonable to reject this 'cheese' given that it's also stupidly expensive. The problem comes in the shops which actually sell 'real' cheese (of which there are a pleasently surprising number). They sell cheese, but it may as well be gold. By point of comparison, a small chunk of red leicester (yes, I accept it's imported) would cost me the equivalent of 6 or 7 quid?! And don't even start me on gouda... So they tempt me with all of this nice real cheese and then price me out of it... :( *sigh*


Squash. Squash is less of a problem, but now that I can't have it, I want it (i know, classic psychology, I just need to stop being so damned normal...). The Canadians don't do squash. They do suspicious powder to put in drinks (and not very much of that). In fact they like powder over here - there are, like, a million and one flavours of powder to put on popcorn (yet none of them sweet. Fail.). Today I discovered the true price of squash. We came across a random newsagent that imnports British stuff and got very excited when we found Robinsons squash (and PG Tips, Twiglets, and proper Heinz Baked Beans... You could even choose to spend $6 on a Daily Mail, if you were particularly desperate...). However, you discover how much you truely like squash when you find out that it comes with a price tag of nearly $8. At that point you discover where your loyalties truely lie...

Wednesday and Thursday: For Lack of a Better Title...

So my wednesday was mostly taken up with moving. We met up with our landlords (a lovely irish couple who recognise the need for at least some furnished accomodation in Vancouver....) to sign things and get keys on wednesday morning/lunch time.

All being well, we headed off down the slope to see what was down the road. Quickly discovering that the next area along, Capilano, was considerably closer than we had thought, we were pleased to discover not only a Walmart, but also a 'price smart foods' and a 'thrifty foods'. Unfortunately they don't really live up to their names - but i'll save my rant about how expensive food, and specifically cheese, is for another time. This area also has a big shopping 'mall' and other stuff besides that we haven't got around to checking out yet.

Having grabbed some lunch in the food hall, we decided to head back to downtown. The others to go back to their hostel and me, having checked out of my hostel already, to begin the mammoth task of moving all my stuff...

Having packed more or less to the weight limits, this was a little over 30kgs in a couple of backpacks... not fun. I lolloped down the hill and got my first bus, while debating whether it would be better to get the sea bus across to North Van (much quicker, but with more changes (hence more bits of walking and carrying) or whether to stick with buses and go over the bridge (Longer, with a slightly longer walk, but on a more agreeable gradient of slope). In the end I went with the bus, and almost immediately regretted it.

From the minute I arrived in Vancouver, I seem to have managed to end up sat next to the crazy person on every bus I get on. I seem to attract them. I get on and sit down, and one stop later crazy person of the day gets on and starts talking to me... *sigh*

Anywayz, crazy people aside, I made it to the end of my road in one piece and made the long, arduous 3 block journey up the hill with my stuff...
When I finally got in (having participated in the now ongoing battle between the keys and the locks) i dumped my stuff and sat down to relax. I also got my first taste of just how bad Canadian tv is. I had been warned, I'll admit, but it is staggeringly bad...

Having been sat down for merely half an hour I got a text saying that the hostel the others were staying in was doing an ice skating trip - did i want to come? (Of course I wanted to come...) So I zoomed back downtown to meet up with them. Ice skating was fun, although I've learned that having got used to hockey skates i now seem to be incapable of using figure skates without simply tripping over the picks at the front - fail...

On return to my new home, I finally made dinner at about 11pm and chilled out infront of some more really bad tv, eventually getting so tired that at a little gone midnight i sunk into the ginormous, princess-and-the-pea-would-be-proud double bed and fell asleep.


The next day really started when my new housemates arrived with their stuff. We spent an hour unpacking and then went to buy some basic essentials. Somehow this took most of the afternoon. The day nearly gone, I cooked everybody a stir fry and we chilled out in the living room.

Flat hunting!

So by Monday I was thoroughly fed up of giving all of my money to the hostel, and had found a couple of girls from the flight to look for an apartment with.

10am monday morning was flat hunting time. Spent most of the morning getting rather disheartened that we couldn't get through to any of the adverts that looked good and that most stuff was either out of our budget, or entirely unfurnished with no option to include stuff, which is all very fine if you're staying somewhere a long time, but we only really wanted it for the ski season...

Anywayz, after a very frustrating morning, we'd managed to line up a whole one viewing and decided to go over and check out the North Shore for ourselves, see if we could find any 'to let' signs to aid our search...

After walking off the sea bus, more or less the first place we came across was a realty and letting agency. Think our fairy god mother must having been watching over us, becuase we walked in there and were sorted out more or less instantly - and were served tea in a tea pot to boot... After a few options we chose to see an apartment which is only 3 blocks from the sea bus (10 minutes into downtown vancouver) and likewise from the buses up to the mountains. It also turned out to be about as good as it was gonna get in this location. It came entirely furnished, right down to ice cream scoop and pizza slicer... It's even due to have it's french windows replaced sometime soon, so i don't even need to worry about head butting them... ;o)

Roll on celebratory drinks with random australians that evening.

Signed the contract the next day and exchanged keys on wednesday :D

Granville Island

...So, i meant to finish off my Stanley Park post ages ago and forgot. After the hot chocolate revived us both, we set off down the hill and got on a boat ferry for five minutes - very exciting. - to go to Granville Island, which contrary to both its name and the ferry, is not an island. In fact, Granville Island is an amazing and elaborate ploy to get all of Vancouver's tourist shops (and hence, i think, all of its tourists...) in to one small bit of space that is almost not attached to Vancouver at all. Very clever.

And it seems to work as well. Granville Island has nice (See: 'expensive') markets, with nice ('expensive') food and multicoloured pasta and stuff. Besides that, it has all of Vancouver's tourist gift shops (i've really not seen any anywhere else... ) and some random ones besides. It also has the best hat shop ever, with the best purple-top-hat fascinator I've ever seen. Next time I have $74 to spare I'm going to buy it. I have no idea what i'll do with it or when I'll wear it, but it's awesome :D Maybe i'll just become a milliner and make my own... Mmm hats...

Once I'd suitable sated my desire to try on every hat in the shop, I decided it was time to head back, persuing the vaious galleries and other attractions on the way back to the pier. While various of the BUNAC group had all gone to support the Canucks (Vancouver's ice hockey team) at one of the first games of the season (something i will definitely do once i have job to pay for it!), I had dinner with a few of the others at their hostel and discuss the possibility of flat hunting together... but that's for the necxt post.

Doing the tourist Thing #1 (Part 1)

So I'm sure that there's infinitely more tourist thing to do, but we used this afternoon to make a good start.

First up, a bike ride around the edge of Stanley Park, which also happens to be the sea wall, and the whole thing is stunning from start to finish. I'd like to say I took pictures at regular intervals so that I could guide you around, but essentially, I got the highlights; inbetween you can just imagine, on one side, lots and lots of trees, in various shades of autumn all looking magnificent, and on the other, sea and beaches covered in artistically placed drift wood to a back drop of shiny looking North (and I think West) Vancouver.

After picking up some bikes from a very nice Scottish guy in the rental shop (no, there are no Canadians in Vancouver - well, maybe one or two, but not very many... In fact it's filled with people like scottish guy, who liked it so much on his first trip (a la student working holiday visa) that he's come back), we headed down past English Bay and the Lost Lagoon (see first blog entry for pics) to get on to the sea wall in the right direction. As a slight aside, I forgot to take a picture of this the other day, but I admire this tree for its (or its owners) tenacity...


Moving on to Stanley Park, easily distacted as we are, we almost instantly stopped to take a look at a copse of Totem poles:
Some of them looking rather fierce (though, me rather less so...):

Others were more colourful:
















I kind of feel that as an anthropologist I should give you some greater insight into the deeper meaning of these particular totem poles, but, um... basically we cycled past them and said 'ooo', so maybe I'll save that for another time...

Around the corner, we came across a woman chillin' (probably quite literally, it was pretty cold) on a rock.
On closer inspection we think she might have been a diver of some sort - looks like she's got flippers and a mask, but since we were restrained to the cyclists bit of the path, and a blue fence got in the way of going to see any kind of explanation on the walkers bit, we're really none the wiser. I just though it was quite cool really!

Moving on round the corner abit you come across the Lions Gate Bridge, which, to be honest, looks a lot like the Golden Gate Bridge, but green. In fact, I maintain that the whole of Vancouver looks/is rather like San Francisco, but a bit flatter... It's more convincing from a distance, but the evil blue fence of doom didn't disappear until we were underneath it, so i didn't manage to take any non-blue-criss-cross picture of the bridge before that...

I thought dad might appreciate the next photo, which appear sporadically along the path when they wanted you to walk and hold your bike:I thought it was kinda cute...


Now to come full circle, I end my tour of Stanley Park back where we started (metaphorically, though not quite literally) with an idiosyncratic tree, which greets you moreorless as you are coming back around the headland to English Bay:Seen in it's full context in the picture underneath to the right:

Having recovered from our chilly but awesome bike ride, me and Nikki, having recovered the feeling in our fingers with a hot chocolate, headed to Granville Island. But more about that next time.

Here endeth the picture show...

Another day in Canada-land: Admin time... (can't you tell this is going to be a fun post already? )

Well, I thought it was about time I kept this up-to-date with what's going on, so here goes...

I've been here all of 3 days, and yet some how it feels like much longer - perhaps just because I've managed to fit so much in.

Post-orientation meeting, various of us went to set up bank accounts and get mobile phones. The bank account was pretty simple as long as you give up any notion of being cheap and simply decide to pay the $12 a month, so as to not accidently incure the wrath of the bank-gods by *shock horror* using their services... Such is life.
I guess it's actually a bit weird that we're not charged for our banks back home - i mean I know they make money on our money, but it's still unusual to not pay for services in this day and age...

Anywayz, any animosity i may have felt towards the banks was immediately suplanted by my new hatred for the phone companies here. Mobiles and contracts here are the very definition of daylight robbery as far as i'm concerned. If they could charge you for breathing near the phone they would - in their advertising having 'unlimited incoming texts' for free is a perk?! Infact, one of my hostel room mates came in just now and said that on the first week of her 1 month contract she'd managed to amass extra charges of over $100! Suffice to say I'm using my phone sparingly and only ever texting people unless absolutely necessary...

All of that took a surprisingly long time and the remainder of the afternoon was largely spent being bedraggled and damp. With plans afoot to go the the job fair at Cypress Mountain the next day, me and Nikki accidently found ourselves sampling the one thing in Vancouver which is cheap - it's enormous pizza slices (along with a fizzy 'grape' drink that was a more radioactive purple that i've ever seen on any grape...) - afterwards feeling immediately guitly since we'd set out for a healthy snack... The evening concluded with "Trivia" (a pub quiz to you and me) at the hostel that the main group is staying in. Being the party animals that we are, by the end of the second round, at just a little before ten, me and Nikki headed back to the hostel unable to keep our eyes open any longer and promptly fell asleep.

Normally I would have to say that Friday morning was a flurry of activity for me, adjusting and printing out my CV (sorry, 'resume'...) and getting all the right copies of documents, but actually I keep waking up so early that it was more like a leisurely stroll of activity. I've never so consistantly worken up at 5am so many days in a row all my life (and while I kind of want it to continue - it's excellent for my productivity in the moring - I also managed to be so tired last night that I went to bed at 8.30 last night and was sound asleep by 9!). Hohum, that sorted I got a shuttle bus up to Cypress mountain - one of Vancouver's 3 main ski hills (the one in the middle, i think... ) - along with British, Irish, Ozzy, Kiwi, Mexican, Austrain, German, and very occasionally Canadian people. An impressive mix in any case. Quite aside from the job fair, it was well worth going up there if for no other reason than the stunning views that you get of the city from above. Unfortunately by the time you get to the top and get out all you can see is ski slopes with no snow on them (very weird sight...), but I did manage to get some pictures from the bus much lower down, as you can see, but no where near the same as at the top. Hopefully if i work up there i'll get the chance to wander around and get a better overview.

The job fair was a strange experience - a bit like a jobs conveyer belt... Hundreds of people sat on one side of the room filling out forms or getting progressively morebored waiting to be called, while on the other side of the room about 20 interviews were taking place simultaneously. I myself had been told that my first choice - guest relations - had a long wait and that i should first be interviewed for my second choice - the generic 'cashier'. Sent to the food and bevs section for this, a very friendly guy took one look at my form, asked me if i wanted full time work and then tried very hard to persuade me to work for him. A good start, I thought. However, I thought it might be jumping the gun to immediately accept the first thing I got when it was already written on a bit of paper that it wasn't my first choice, so i thought I'd wait and see. My second interview was very much more an interview - you can very easily tell which department was more popular! Since they had so many people applying they said they'd let us know sometime this coming week. But in any case, the first guy gave me his card and told me that if for some reason they didn't want me (he thought they 'probably would'), that he would be more than happy to have me and that I should just give him a call. So, I'm waiting to see on that one, but it looks like a can have a job if i want one. In the mean time, we (those of use who are sticking around vancouver) thought we might check out the Grouse mountain jobs fair next week by way of comparison (and for me as a back up if I was stupid enough not to accept the first job offered to me only to find out it no longer exists when i need it!) . In any case, that's on hold for a bit until we find out the results, and now the bigger priority is finding somewhere to live. For every night extra that I spent in a hostel I can just feel my money hemorrhaging into nowhere... We'll probably be looking in North Vancouver, for any one that makes sense to, since it's closer to the mountains, and actually only a 10 minute seabus/15 minute bus away from downtown. But on the other hand, I would love to be in the West End - decisions, decisions... We'll have to wait for the exciting outcome of that one...

Like I said, yesterday ended rather feebly with a 9pm bedtime and a nice long sleep. Just as well, since this morning we went for a hike. A lovely park around a set of water falls called Cypress Falls. Had a mosey around, saw lots of trees and some lovely waterfalls, hugged a tree named 'Steve' and took lots of pretty pictures. Remainder of the day spent being tired, discovering 'Blenz' - a coffee shop that does amazing hot chocolate, as well as serving a decent range of loose leaf teas, including oolong :D Yay tea!, and then looking up potential accomodation options on line. All topped off by a second visit to the lovely Thai place for some noodles. Mmmm...

'Welcome to Vancouver: a Nuclear Weapons Free Zone'

Having spent approximately 10 hours between the chronological hours of 10am and 11am yesterday, mostly spent watching ice bergs and ice sheets, prairies and ginormous mountains, I made it to Vancouver!

The approach into Vancouver really is stunning - mountains and sea, and in our case the luck of a beautifully clear blue day. Though I must say, Vancouver looks an awful lot like a real Sim City from the air - complete with mountains and rivers in silly places and neat little grid systems with cute little cars wending their way around...

Anywayz, having been grilled by some terribly efficient woman at the airport, they decided that I wasn't so bad after all and let me in. Leaving the rest of the BUNAC group flight people to it, I left to go and find my hostel (having hedged my bets wrongly as to which they might be staying in). A short train and bus ride later I finally got to put down my bags - carefully packed to be 22.9kg precisely - which was a massive relief!




Despite having guessed wrong on the BUNAC hostel, the first person I ran into in my room, a lovely girl called Nicky, is also on a bunac worknig holiday visa having just arrived from Seattle (though she's actully Australian). Rather than waste the stunning weather we'd been greeted with - we might not it again for months (!) - we decided to go out exploring.

Heading in direction in particular, we ended up at English Bay Beach, which gave pretty awesome views of the city and the sea. Having so far avoided being squished by cars driving down the wrong side of the road, we nearly were so lucky with the cyclists and skaters who are ubiquitous all down the sea wall. Leaving Stanley park for another day, we headed round the edge of it to the Lost Lagoon. Having been warned about raccoons, more or less the first we did was run straight in to 3 of them, but they were just so cute (well at least until they started fighting...). I would upload the video, but I think my internet connection might cry. So, that's raccoons down, mooses and bears to go... ::)

Heading past the angry raccoons, we discovered the Lost Lagoon, which you can see on the right. I think the picture just about sums up why so many people like Vancouver (It took all of about 5 minutes to win me over).




Having already taken the obligatory "look I'm next to the sign welcoming me to where i am" picture, we were intrigued to come across another welcome sign near by informing us very clearly that we were in a nuclear weapons free zone. Both vastly relieved at the news, we fell about laughing at the sign and coupldn't help but take a picture, of course...





Having had out wander for the day we decided to head back into town to see if we could find the hostel that the others were staying in. Using my spidey-travellers sense, combined with the knowledge that there is a bar at the bottom of that partciular hostel, I figured we might run in to some of the group - and low and behold, about 15 of them were sat there complete with beer and food. Spent a lovely evening getting to know them, and explaining the finer aspects of ice hockey. By 8.30 we were absolutely shattered - funny that - so me and Nicky headed back to our hostel, via the absolutely gorgous smelling Thai place on the corner - the single best Thai food I've had since I was in Thailand. Soooo nice (except that it had more chilli in it that was strictly necessary and left my nice dry-from-flying-for-10-hrs lips burning all evening.

So, I guess that was that for the first day. Seems rather like more that you can actually fit in to 24hrs... oh, wait...

We're just about to head of to the orientation now, having had bagels and lovely things for breakfast (you could have had a muffin or a scone if you waned... weird...), so hopefully they'll say useful things and sort us all out.