Merry Canuckmas

Dear blog,

Finally I get a chance to sit down and update you! I've been working a lot in the run-up to Christmas, including the last six days in a row, so it's nice to get a relaxing day off!

So I managed to get to my first Vancouver Canucks game on Decemeber 6th when the Colorado Avalanche came to town. One word: INCREDIBLE. The atmosphere inside Rogers Arena was absolutely amazing. I can't imagine how much the place'll be rocking come playoff time! I've mentioned previously how much the hockey team means to the city and finally I got a piece of the action myself. For those interested, you can read about the game here but in summary the Canucks absolutely dominated proceedings, running out 6-0 winners. I managed to get a few pictures and couple of videos, so here's a taster:

Pre-game

Face off!

Our #1 goaltender - Roberto "LUUUUOOOOOO!!!!!" Luongo

Canucks celebrating at the bench after going 4-0 up!

I even managed to catch the sixth goal on camera for your enjoyment:

So I was a very happy boy leaving Rogers Arena that night. I actually only got a ticket for that game due to a mix-up by the guy selling tickets giving me one for the game on the 6th rather than the game on the 19th that Daniel and the girls were going to. I was more than happy with the way things turned out though!


Another highlight night was the Hermes Christmas party on the 12th. Everyone turned out for a fantastic meal at Blue Water Cafe, supposedly the best seafood restaurant in Vancouver. I wasn't left disappointed. The sablefish main I had was definitely in the top 5 meals of my life! The president of Hermes Canada was due to join us but unfortunately she had to pull out a couple of days before due to illness, so I wasn't able to do the networking I'd hoped! Fortunately a couple of colleagues from the Toronto store came in her place (one of whom was her son, who worked in the Vancouver store for the following week) so hopefully they'll put in a good word for me with the boss in case I'm in need of a few hours when I get round to Toronto or Montreal!

Our starter - the seafood tower. Two tiers of oysters, prawns, seared red tuna, smoked salmon,
jellyfish, scallops ceviche, clams and mussels.

I think a good night was had by all. Probably too good on my part as I was feeling absolutely awful the next day in work! I went a little bit too hard for someone who didn't have the next day off. Thankfully I managed to make it through but it was straight to bed when I got back home in the evening! I managed to tick one of the "to do before I die" list by having oysters for the first time. Must say I was pleasantly surprised to get some nice Hermes christmas gifts too!

My tour of the various restaurants of Vancouver has also continued. I joined Rita for Vietnamese and Chinese lunches last week, both of which were great. Also went back to my favourite Arsenal-watching bar up the road from work, Joey Burrard, for a bite to eat, couple of drinks and to watch the Canucks game with Gina and Irina last week.

The only big night out I've had amongst all these Christmas hours was on Saturday night to the Red Bull Thr3estyle DJ World Finals which were on at the Commodore Ballroom on Granville St. I went for a few drinks for Linda's leaving do beforehand. Linda is a friend of Daniel's from back in Ireland and she's now come to the end of her year. Nice girl and now I'm not sure who's going to look after Danny boy from now on! The DJs were ok - I was hoping it'd be more electronic/trance/house kind of sound but it turned out to be almost every genre and the DJs trying to showcase their mixing and crowd-pleasing skills more than anything. Still, something different and fairly enjoyable. It turned out that the Canadian DJ won - of course, no bias there whatsoever.

So that's about it really. I've got Christmas Eve and Christmas Day off. Unfortunately back to it Boxing Day so I'm not able to join Daniel and the rest head up to a Kelowna ski lodge for Christmas. Would have been awesome I'm sure. Looks like it'll be a turkey dinner for one for me! Hopefully I can meet up with a couple of friends in town and I'll have ample time to Skype home to the family.

Merry Canuckmas one and all,
Simon x

Here comes the winter / BC Lions check into Boomtown

Hi all,

How are you? I hope you're well.

So, we had our first snow here in Burnaby on Nov 17th. It was what I'd call a 'UK snowfall' - a light dusting of not much significance but cool all the same. It lasted about a day, ultimately only making the sidewalks slippery as hell. The mountains have had a lot more of the stuff. The SameSun facebook pages have been regularly notifying me of snow in Banff and Kelowna, and the mountains around Vancouver now have that picturesque white top to them. It looks awesome on the horizon.

Last weekend saw the Grey Cup festival take place in Vancouver. BC Place, the big downtown stadium that recently re-opened after having its roof renovated, was hosting the Canadian Football League (American football) playoff finals this year, and it just so happened that the hometown BC Lions had made the final after a storming end to the season. The festival ran 24-27th November and there was certainly a football buzz around town. Not only BC Lions fans but fans of all the CFL teams seemed to have decended on the city for the activities, parade and game.

The big parade happened on Saturday morning. It was raining in typical Vancouver fashion but that didn't deter the crowds. I was working as usual but luckily the parade was running right down Burrard St, in front of the store, so I didn't miss any of the cheerleaders. The store was completely dead for the first 2.5 hours of the day as all eyes were on the street, meaning I got to watch the whole thing! There were tons of floats, marching bands, cheerleaders and flag-wavers entertaining the masses. I even got the chance to do my best wide receiver impression after I spotted promo balls being thrown into the crowd by a few makeshift quarterbacks. I dashed out of the store and claimed a ball for my own (despite, admittedly, a pretty poor fumble).

By no means the most exciting pictures you'll ever see but proof it happened:

And here's a quick snap of my souveneir:

The final itself was played between the BC Lions and Winnipeg. It was a great game and BC came out on top 34-23! Champions!!! Hopefully it'll inspire the Canucks to go one better in the ice hockey playoffs this year! Here's a photo of our MVP quarterback hero, Travis Lulay, with the Grey Cup:

From: http://www.theprovince.com/sports/5775895.bin?size=620x400s

I also got my first taster of a Japanese noodle bar, thanks to my colleague Boney (Bonnie) taking me for lunch a couple of days ago. We went to a place called Benkei just a block away from the store which she had recommended to me a couple of days earlier. She's originally from Hong Kong and has been in the city for a long time now, so I've been trying to get as many oriental restaurant recommendations out of her as possible. I can't remember the exact name of the dish but it was a spicy pork number and I had some pork dumpings on the side. Deeeeelicious! No problems wielding the chopsticks again either.

Other than that it's just been the usual work, gym, watching ice hockey lark. I had a day off sick and one day the SkyTrain wasn't working at all, so had to take 3 different buses to downtown and ended up being 1h30 late. There hasn't really been much other excitement apart from Dan's birthday last weekend. We went for a few drinks at his bar, The Corner, then on to the Yaletown Brewing Company which was a good laugh. Mark and I bought him a Canucks t-shirt which he seemed chuffed with. Happy days.


Finally, Mark is flying off to the Far East on Monday, so all the best to him on his travels. See you in another life, brother.

Ciao for now,
Si x

An arresting experience or two

Oops. Yesterday when I thought I’d better post a new update here I believed it had only been a week and a half or a fortnight at most since my last. How times flies, eh?

Halloween came and went for me. I was working so didn't get to have too much fun but it's a pretty massive day/night over here. Costumes were on sale for weeks beforehand. Kids even trick or treat the stores and shops! I managed to enjoy a few of the fireworks that were going off in the days either side (although nothing of the scale of a good old UK November the fifth). 

The first week of November brought the sales at the store. Hermes, I’m told, only hold one or two sales per year, where a batch of previous seasons’ clothing and shoes come out for 5 days at 40% or 60% off the original price. Before you ask, no, no handbags are included and yes, unfortunately everything we have is out on display and there aren’t any different sizes out the back. 

The only thing that I quite liked was a duffle coat but, while 60% off sounded like a good deal, over $4000 was just slightly out of my budget. I wondered how much stuff I could do with the $4000 (yea, like a seriously considered buying the coat...). There were some quite nice formal shoes as well but they only went up to size 45, so no good for me. 

Anyway, the first day of the sale was absolutely mental. As I’ve previously mentioned, some people are absolutely obsessed with the brand and the hardcore were out in full force, queuing up outside the store for a good while before we opened. There must have been a line about 50-60 long when we opened at 10am. Let the mad scramble begin. The store was super-busy for the rest of the day and I had my doubts whether any stock would be left for the remaining days. One of my colleagues later told me an actual fight nearly broke out between two guys over a pair of shoes. Oh, how much progress the human race has made over the years. Fortunately the other 4 days of the sale were far less manic. For me it had just meant plenty of hours and therefore a nice pay check at the end of the week. Happy days.

The cold and damp weather caught up with me last week. At work on Tuesday I began suffering with the dreaded sore throat, runny nose, cough etc and ended up taking the next day off sick. Little did I know that this would lead me to help come to the rescue of an old fellow falling over just in the front of our house. Daniel was just setting off for work and I was sat watching TV feeling sorry for myself. Next thing I know, Daniel comes running back into the house asking for my help. I go outside and I’m confronted with an old guy collapsed on the floor and 3 or 4 people standing over him. As I get closer I realise that there is blood absolutely STREAMING out of his head, like nothing I’ve seen before. Daniel and another lady were both on the phone to the emergency services and this guy was in a really bad way. I’m not sure whether he slipped and hit his head on the sidewalk or if he’d smashed his head on the wall on the way down but it looked really serious. We managed to get a couple of blankets and I took on the role applying pressure to the guy’s head to try to stem the bleeding. I’ve got to say I’m glad I didn’t get a full view of the actual injury because it felt like I was actually holding the top of his head in place – not pleasant. We managed to do a pretty good job of keeping the guy calm and stable, despite the small lake of blood forming on the ground next to him. Thankfully it wasn’t too long before the ambulance and fire brigade turned up on the scene and took over getting the guy patched up and off to hospital. I don’t know what happened to him but he seemed to be alright when I went back inside so fingers crossed he’s on the mend.

The next day I was feeling a lot better and as it was my actual day off work I decided to go for a wander downtown. My goal was to get to the Vancouver Police Museum that I’d read about in one of my guidebooks. It was a much brighter, clearer day than it had been so took the camera as well. Here are some of the snaps I managed to get:

View from the waterfront across to the North Shore

View from Waterfront/Gastown. Canada Place on the left.

Canada Place

Seaplane in front of Stanley Park

There were a couple of Russian Navy ships in town.

O CANADA!

The Library - took me back to the Rome trip earlier this summer.

Outside BC Place - home of the BC Lions CFL team and The Whitecaps football team.

 

Rogers Arena - home of the mighty Canucks! Do you have the heart of a Canuck? I doubt it...

Plaque tribute to my boy, Trevor Linden, outside Rogers Arena.

 

The museum was also really cool. Quaint is how I’d describe it but certainly worth the $7 admission fee. The building itself was formerly the VPD’s ‘Bureau of Science’ as well as a courtroom and morgue. After reading about the history of the VPD I browsed through countless confiscated weapons, drugs, displays on Vancouver’s most notorious unsolved murders and into the morgue to look at preserved body parts and autopsy accounts. Apparently Errol Flynn had has autopsy there. To borrow the museum’s own catchphrase, it was an arresting experience. Boom-boom-tish.

Situated in a dodgy area but enough entertainment out of $7.

Since then it has just been back to work and business as usual. I’m managing to put away some savings on a regular basis so it’s all good. I’ve finally managed to get some Skype time with my brother, Dad and Mark Step, which was really cool. 

Sports also get a notable mention in this blog entry. Go Canucks go – still pretty inconsistent but a few W’s posted since the last update. Go Texans go – I’ve been following the Houston Texans closely again since arriving and they’re kicking butt, winning their last 4. Arsenal – going from strength to strength and England have just managed to scrape to another friendly victory. The BC Lions CFL team are going to the playoffs and this year the playoff finals are here in Vancouver. Unfortunately no NBA yet still but you can’t have everything.

In other news, Mark has booked a flight to Vietnam and will be leaving Canada in a few weeks time. God speed to you, sir. Just when I thought the house was settled in he dropped that news, so it looks like we'll be getting a new housemate very soon! 

Simon x

Go Canucks Go

So hockey season has started and there’s certainly been a buzz about the place since. I haven’t yet managed to get to a game (tickets are fairly pricey) but it seems half the city have Vancouver Canuck’s jerseys and tops on if it’s a game day. Canucks posters are everywhere around town and even the buses alternate their front display between route number/destination and a big, bright “Go Canucks Go!” on game day. 

I’ve been told the Canucks are perennial slow-starters so usually have an average October, but they’re certainly one of the NHL’s better teams. Last season they lost in the Stanley Cup finals (the play-off finals for the laymen) – unfortunately taking their Stanley Cup Finals record to 0-3! You may well have heard on the news about the riots that kicked off in parts of Vancouver in the wake of the decisive game 7 loss to Boston earlier this year. Anyway, I’ve watched a few of the games on TV and at the time of writing, though they’ve won 4, lost 3 and had 1 overtime loss. With the NBA in full lock-out mode, hockey has definitely leapt up to number 2 sport for me and I keep bugging my colleagues with Canucks chat despite the fact they mostly couldn’t care less. Favourite players are the big Swedish Sedin twins (naturally) and Ryan Kesler.

So I realised earlier that I’ve now been here for 6 weeks so I better give you my impressions of the city. It’s definitely one of the best looking cities I’ve been to. The nature and scenery are absolutely breathtaking at times. Travelling to and from Downtown is great as the Skytrain is mostly overground, so you get a spectacular view of the mountains. There seems to be a perfect balance with the ocean, the mountains and the city. One of the first things that struck me is how much green there is around the place. There are parks of various sizes all over and you’re never too far away from the grass and trees, even Downtown. Water-features are also very popular here. I’ve got to say I really like them. They look good and they definitely have a calming effect on the soul!

The people are very health conscious and active. As you can imagine, there’s a whole host of activities right on the doorstep; hiking, kayaking, jogging, cycling, skiing, etc. People seem to be big into organic, healthy foods and I’ve met quite a lot of veggies/vegans so far. I’m far from being converted but I’m right on board with all the physical activity! On the subject of people, one thing I didn’t expect was how multi-cultural Vancouver is. There are LOADS of Asians here – and I mean LOADS! I’ve met people from all over the world, be they travellers or residents. I’ve probably met more Aussies than actual Canadian’s thinking about it! It gives the city a unique flavour and you also get an awesome selection of restaurants. For a big city with all the skyscrapers and highways I love the fact that you never feel crowded or rushed, a la London. The population of Metro Vancouver is around 2 million and I was astounded to hear that the population of Canada as a whole is only 33 million – about 50% of the UK but with 40 times the land area.

Probably the worst part about the city is the number of homeless people around, especially in busy areas Downtown like Granville Street. Due to the milder climate in Vancouver they come from all over – guess it makes for an easier night on the streets. Chinatown and the Downtown eastside area are notorious for drug addicts and beggars but I’ve got to say they seem to be pretty well-behaved from what I’ve seen. I believe there’s a law that they can only ask you for money/food once and believe it or not this seems to be adhered to, so they don’t cause too much bother.

So since my last update I’ve mostly been working. It has been going great at Hermes and most days are a good laugh but some people really do have too much money! The average sale must be between $500-1000 and I’ve seen people dropping $15k+ without batting an eyelid a few times. Some people are actually obsessed with the brand too – it’s a little bit crazy! Still, it pays the bills and it also gives me the opportunity to meet a hell of a lot more people than I would do grinding an office job. We get the odd Canadian celebrity popping in, which is cool, and more than a few arrogant tossers, which is not so much. It’s taken a little time to adjust to not having weekends (I usually have Mondays and Thursdays off) and it also means I don’t really have time to venture too far at the minute. Still, my original plan was to work for around 9 months and go travelling at the end, so there’s plenty of time to explore!

I did take the opportunity on one of my days off last week to have a look around Burnaby Central Park. The weather hasn’t been too great recently but it was decent enough for a solitary stroll around this large green/woodland space not too far from my place in Edmonds. Here are a few pictures I took, as you can see I made some new friends:

Black squirrels - so cute!

Some type of goose - think they're named after some country or other. Not sure.

Korean War Memorial

Swangard Stadium

I’ve also managed to join a gym finally. It’s only about 5 minutes walk from my place and very cheap ($20/month rolling) compared to a few places I looked at. It’s only been open around 3 months so all the equipment (of which there’s a lot!) is all nice and new and clean. I’ve been doing the intervals class on Thursday mornings which has been good fun. The first time I was the only person that signed up so I got a decent personal training session out of it! 

It was quite cool this Thursday as the owner of the gym and all-round Vancouver and NHL legend Trevor Linden showed up to film some promos to go up on the website. I’ll have to keep an eye out as I may feature working out in the background of one or two! This came the day after I got extremely jealous of my colleague, Gina, as she goes to one of Steve Nash’s gyms Downtown and the man himself showed up when she was down there. I definitely would have been a lot more star-struck with Steve Nash, but, hey, I’m a hockey fan now so big Trevor Linden will suit me fine!

I also managed to pick up a basketball for $4 at the local thrift shop, so I can no go ballin’ at the park behind my house which has a pretty decent court. However, the rain has arrived in the last few days and looks set to stay so may be waiting a while till I can get out there.

Trevor in his prime

One new experience for me a couple of days ago was a Green Tea Latte from Canada’s favourite, Tim Horton’s. Seemed like a novel idea but tasted a bit weird. Apparently it’s pretty popular though. 

Today one of our happy customers brought in a big platter of sushi which tasted awesome. I haven't really had much sushi before and when I have it's mostly been the crappy stuff they sell in the supermarkets back home. There was so much I ate some when I came back from lunch, on afternoon break then offered to take the rest of it home for my dinner as it was just going to be chucked out in the end. Good stuff!

A final word about Skype. I haven’t really had much opportunity to talk with anyone due to the time difference and me working weekends. If you want to get some face-time just drop me an email and we’ll sort something out. My username for anyone who doesn’t have me is sfield86.

I’m off to watch some Trailer Park Boys and hit the hay before Arsenal game and gym before work tomorrow.

Love,

S x

Back to employment!

Hey yall,

Just checking in with a very quick update.

The last few days of last week were pretty hectic, calling and emailing recruiters, attending interviews, etc. I managed to get a day's work in a office not far from my house. It was an employee benefits service business of some kind but it turned out the office was being shut down, so I'd arrived on the very last day. Boxes of papers were all over the floor and pictures were being taken off the walls. I was there doing some final organising and photocopying. Not great fun but I was thinking of the $.

On Friday I went for an interview for a junior accounts position at a company in Burnaby that manufactures deep-sea diving suits and submarine rescue vechicles. Seemed like a really interesting place but unfortunately I didn't get it.

Saturday and Monday I was working at the Renaissance Hotel near the waterfront in Downtown Vancouver. It was basically shifting and assembling new coffee tables for all of the rooms. It was tough work and took an unbelievably long time to get them all up (there must have been new tables for about 450 rooms). I was working with a German guy, Sven, who was nice enough. He seemed to get the British sense of humour by the end of it as well - either that or he was giving me plenty of pity laughs.

Anyway, the major news is I now have a permanent job as a store assistant at a really nice store in Downtown, Hermes. It's a very expensive French high-fashion/design store. Not sure how I got the gig but should be an interesting place to work! I'll keep you updated on how it goes!

Much love,
S x

Boring week -> New Place!

Hello everyone! Hope you're well. Apologies for not posting an update for a while!

When I left you last time I had a butt-load of 'real-life' stuff still to sort out. Well, the good news is that it is mostly all done! I've got a new cell phone (number on my fb page should you ever need it - I get unlimited international text messages, but I guess you don't), my resume is ready to rock and... I've moved into a new place! (Yes, sorry that I haven't got a job yet, Mum.)

After a couple of days scouring craigslist for apartments it seemed like the whole process might be a bit of a headache. Initially I was looking for 2-bed apartments for Mark and I, but soon started looking for 3-bed places with our good buddy, Daniel, your typical gift-of-the-gab Irishman, who we'd met in the hostel. We didn't even want to move in with him but somehow he talked us into it. (j/k Danny boy!) We figured an extra person to split bills etc could only be a good thing. The bad news was we were only hearing negative stories when apartment hunting. Someone in the hostel was saying 2-bed places are hard enough to find, 3-bed impossible. From the ads I'd seen and the stories I was hearing it sounded like most places a rented unfurnished too, which would be a bit of an expensive nightmare for us. Anyway, unperturbed, I carried on the hunt for 3-beds.

On Monday I found an ad for place in Collingwood, a residential district about 12 mins from Downtown on the SkyTrain, that Mark and I had been to have a quick walk around previously. I arranged a viewing and the 3 of us went out there to take a look. The place was great but, as feared, completely unfurnished, so we had to say thanks but no thanks. So the search continued. The annoying thing with craigslist is that some people include photos, others hardly any descriptions, some with phone numbers and others you can only email (not to mention the site has a lot of scammers).

On Wednesday morning I had a promising lead on a 3-bed place in South Burnaby. I made the call and we went to view the place a few hours later. We met this guy at his restaurant (more of a Filipino fast-food cafe) and he drove us round to the place. It's even further out of town than Collingwood but still on the same SkyTrain Line, so no more than 20 minutes from Edmonds station. I'd be pretty happy with that commute if I was in London, I thought to myself. The place itself was fantastic. It's the upper floor of a house that this guy, Jun, had only recently bought. 3 big bedrooms, a large living room and a decent size kitchen with all the required appliances. It actually seemed too good to be true, so I was very cautious and acted somewhat like a character in Spooks during the whole process. However, everything seemed to check out and Jun appeared to be a stand-up guy, promising to provide even more furnishings than were in the place at the time and he even gave us a quick drive around the area whilst we struck up a conversation about Manny Pacquiao. Another benefit of this place was that we could move in straight away, rather than waiting for the 1st or 15th of the month, which seems customary here. We shook hands on a $550/month rent each (approx £350/month), which would include all of our utilities (water, electric, cable TV, 20mb wifi etc) - very happy! I even managed to bag myself the room with en-suite - a reward for finding the place I guess! It turned out that some of Jun's relatives would be living in the basement suite below us and he even said that they would do all our laundry for us! I didn't really know what to make of that. I'd feel bad lumping all my laundry on the poor lady downstairs!

The whole thing had worked out really well for Mark and I, as we were due to check out from the SameSun on Friday morning and could move into our new pad Friday afternoon. For those that are interested, here we are on google maps - at Mary Ave and Edmonds St. It seems to be a nice area, with most things within 5 mins walk and a couple of decent parks nearby for runs etc. It's certainly a lot more peaceful than Granville St. Here's a shot of Edmonds:

Sorry, here you go, the real Burnaby-Edmonds:

Not our view unfortunately, but looks alright, don't you think?

Here's a few shots of the place. Sorry, no wide-angle camera to take decent room shots. Very bare at the minute but once we've all got jobs I'm sure we'll start to fill it with junk.

7237 Mary Ave

Living room 1

Living room 2

My room (very interesting)

Kitchen

Little balcony/back yard. (Taken from inside the kitchen as it's pissing down)

It may be a little way out of Downtown Vancouver but as I previously mentioned it's only 20 mins on the SkyTrain. We're on a month-by-month basis too, so we're not tied down.

There hasn't been much adventuring done over the past week as you can imagine. I've done my first couple of food shops, got myself the equivalent of a Tesco clubcard, scouted some gyms ready for signing up once the job is in the bag and we've tried out the few bars that are in our area. Nothing too thrilling!

So today is the start of a new week - job week. It's a typical rainy day here. I best stop procrastinating/blog-writing and get on with firing some resumes out!

Catch you later!
Simon x