Party Time!

Howdy all,

It's been a couple of weeks of party mode for me here in Vancouver. Productivity has been at its lowest point since I arrived! The weather has been mostly cold and wet though, so it's been the perfect time to do it.

On Feb 11th my favourite DJ, the Dutch maestro, Sander Van Doorn, was in town along with other world-famous DJs Benny Benassi and Arty. The event started pretty early but was coming at the end of my first Saturday off since starting at Hermes so it was actually a nice treat. It was on at the Vancouver Convention Centre. Someone told me that big DJ nights like this have to start and end early because of city bylaws. Anyway, it was an absolutely amazing night! Sander Van Doorn was superb as always, Benny Benassi was a little disappointing for me but Arty was really good too. I won't bore you with too many of the details here but here are a couple of pics and videos to give you an idea (skip to next section if you have no interest in electronic music!):

No Arty = No Party!

Benny doing his thing

Sander doing what he does best - destroying dancefloors

Going offfffff!!!!!

SvD rocking the Convention Centre

I have already booked tickets for Armin Van Buuren and Steve Angello, coming to the Convention Centre on April 7th. I absolutely cannot wait for that! Two of the world's biggest DJs that I haven't actually seen live yet.

Saturday Feb 18th was Gina and I's joint birthday party bash @ Sip lounge & then Republic on Granville St. Sip was fairly chilled out. Got a snack and a few drinks in whilst meeting a lot of Gina's friends. Unfortunately I don't have any photos myself (actually, I'm thankful there's no 'evidence') but ended up having one of the best nights I've had so far since I've been here. Then again, how bad a night can a guy have when it's just him and a group of gorgeous girls?

On Feb 20th we all went for a meal at the Victoria chinese restaurant after work. It was nice to get the whole Hermes team out for a meal and we got good service on account of Boney pretty much being their number one customer. Even better was that it was all paid for! I ended up going out for drinks with Gina and Irina afterwards. I had been planning to go to the gym the following morning, so I had told Gina I was going home straight after the meal. This turned into me agreeing to go for a quick non-alcholic drink up the road, then 'OK, I'll have 1 beer', then 'OK, one more'. Fast forward to 5am and we're spilling out of Edgewater Casino trying to focus enough to spot a taxi. A serious lack of discipline shown and I paid for it the next day!

The last couple of days have been pretty fun, starting with the Arsenal v Spurs match! I wasn't going to bother given how poorly we'd been playing recently and after going 2-0 down inside 30 mins I was regretting not getting the extra sleep! However, what a turnaround! Hopefully we can make a decent push for 4th place and then take care of the mess in the summer! If it's any consolation for Spurs fans, the Canucks also blew a 2 goal lead that day, losing in Dallas in overtime. On the bright side, they are currently top of the NHL and the city is starting to buzz at the prospect of another playoff run.

As many of you will know, yesterday was my 26th birthday. I was pretty overwhelmed by the wishes coming in by email and on facebook etc. Thanks guys!! Made me miss everyone from home! The guys at work got me a really nice cake from Thierry's (on Alberni St). Thankfully I'd made the effort to get down to the gym in the morning as I also got some Thierry macaroons courtesy of Paul. All-in-all a nice, chilled out birthday!

The major news of the past couple of weeks is that I've decided to apply for another year on my visa.  I'm having a great time over here so far, so why not? People have been telling me only good things about Vancouver in the summer and I really don't want to miss out on it now! My original plan was to travel West coast to East coast from June onwards. Now it looks like I'll be taking a short trip to Montreal at the beginning of June for the Canadian Grand Prix (so excited for this!) and then coming back to enjoy summer in/around Vancity. It'll give me the opportunity to perhaps make some trips to the Island and to a few places close to Vancouver and allow me to save more money for the grand trip next summer.

My family seems to support the idea, which is nice to hear. Obviously it all depends on being granted another year on the visa. Fingers crossed! My plans could completely change again if this doesn't come off! So I'm currently trying to organise the paperwork and photos to re-apply for the IEC. Along with that I'm also trying to get my head around the tax return to try and claim a few dollars back from the Canadian tax man! Fun times!!

Until next time!
Simon x

February already!

Hello all,

I'm back with another update! Currently enjoying the back end of two days off in a row. Nice and relaxing and finally my suit can go to the dry cleaners again!

January was overall a pretty chilly month and we had a few days of snow. I counted myself lucky that I'm living in the area I'm in, which is comparitively very mild to the regions further north and east. I heard Calgary was down into the -20s! The main thing that has stuck me this winter is that the UK could learn a lot of decent lessons from the Canadians on how to handle the winter and in particular the snow!

Even Downtown Van got a dusting - doesn't happen too often supposedly.

At the end of the last update I said it looked like we were getting a new flatmate. That turned out to be true (although it was only a short stay as he moved out again yesterday). His name was Dennis, a cool middle-aged Canadian guy who was in the middle of selling his house to our landlord Jun. A huge hockey fan (surprise, surprise) and a Canucks season-ticket holder. It sounds like he may have the world's largest collection of hockey memorabilia! It's a shame he didn't stay longer really as he was a cool guy, good sense of humour and also had a car! Hot 18-30 Canadian girl next, please, landlord.

On the 23rd I decided to go check out Science World, the big metallic, spiky globe building that adorns the covers of many of the Vancouver guidebooks, as I hadn't done much 'touristy' stuff for a while. They had a dinosaur exhibition going which appealled to me also!

 It turned out to be quite geared towards children, with lots of learning areas and interactive games etc - so perfect for this big kid. The dinosaurs exhibition was easily the highlight. Most of them were animatronic and a couple of them genuinely quite scary! Cool!

Here's a few of my new friends:

Here's a video of one of them in action:

The other main highlight was the Eureka! area where there were tons of cool sciency things to play around with. Oh to be 8 years old again!

Nice view across False Creek to BC Place and Rogers Arena. Not the best day weather-wise though!

After checking out Science World I headed further Downtown to check out another place I'd read about in the guidebook, Gorilla Food cafe on Richards St. Gorilla Food is an organic raw vegan restaurant which I decided I should go and check out whilst I was doing my month of vegetarianism.

I was pleasantly suprised at how good the food was. I wasn't expecting too much flavour-wise but I was proved completely wrong! I ordered a 'Green Curry Nice Bowl' - a salad of green curry marinated veges and seeds. It was SO, SO good. Amazing flavour. I washed that down with a 'Hempnotik' shake made from almonds, bananas, hempnut, hemp protein and dates. Overall, really, really nice. It's a little bit pricey but it was worth checking out, certainly. I felt like a proper zen Vancouver hippy.

Who'd have thought raw vegan would taste so good? Not me!

So my month of vegetarianism came to an end. I was delighted to get back on the meat in the end - tastes too good! The main purpose of doing it was to see if I felt any difference and I must say not really. I think it's because I eat a pretty clean diet anyway, with plenty of fruits and veg, so my body wasn't getting any major boost except not having to digest meat. I carried on my workout regime as usual over the 4 weeks and I do think I would have struggled massively had I not done lacto-ovo and gone strict vegan. Oh well, it was an interesting thing to try.

I celebrated being able to eat meat again with an awesome dinner at Chambar with Gina, Carol, Sookae and Joan after work. A number of the restaurants and cafes around Vancouver were taking part in DineOut Vancouver - a two week event to promote the best food Vancouver has to offer. Chambar is an up-market Belgian restaurant located near BC Place with a nice decor, great food and even better beers. Being able to try it out on the cheaper DineOut set menu was a real bonus. I went for the recommended mussels and washed them down with a couple of their own ales. Delicious!

The end of January also brought the news that a few of the boys from back home will be coming over to Vancouver in May. So excited about that! Can't wait to see them and show them around this great city.

February was started off well enough. The weather has picked up and the place is looking bright again.

On Thursday I went to my 2nd Canucks game against the Western Conference leaders, Detroit Red Wings. I brought a fellow Canuck fanatic, Gina, along with me to what should have been a pretty awesome, intense game between the 2 best in the West. I bought the tickets from Dennis and I must say his seats are awesome! Row 1 right behind the goal that the Canucks shoot at twice. So sweet!

Unfortunately the Canucks didn't really turn up! They fell behind 3 times, somehow managing to equalise 3 times on the back of a stagnant offensive performance. The game went to overtime and then to a shootout, which Detroit promptly won. Still, losing in overtime means you still pick up a point in the NHL so it could have been worse. Hopefully the Canucks can pick it up again soon and make a push for the number 1 seed in the West. Can't wait for playoff time, baby!

The retired jerseys including the big number 16 - Trevor Linden.

The past couple of days have just been pottering around and watching sports. The football over the weekend was pretty enteraining with Arsenal actually managing to win a game and with Chelsea blowing a 3 goal lead against Man U. Dan and I sat down to watch a pretty entertaining Superbowl last night as well. Nice to be able to watch it at a decent time for once!

Anyway, got plenty of bits and bobs to sort out today so I'll leave you to it. Can't believe I've been here for 5 months already, by the way! Hope you're well!

Take care,
Simon x

Holiday Season Comes And Goes

Happy New Year! Welcome to the first post of 2012.

The holiday season seemed to absolutely fly by. I guess that's the way it always is if you're in the retail industry, as most stores now only seem to close for Christmas Day and possibly New Years day, so you're more than likely going to be finding yourself at work. Thankfully I did manage to get a couple of days off myself for some welcome relaxation. I hope Santa brought you everything you hoped for!

In summary, my holiday season was filled with eating and drinking a-plenty. My sampling of all the different types of cuisine Vancouver has to offer continued in a big way, starting with Malaysian at a nice place called Banana Leaf in the West End with Sookie and Rita after work on the 23rd. Good food and good company after my last working day before Christmas.

Pretty spectacular lights outside St Paul's Hospital en-route to Banana Leaf

Malaysian Beef Curry - went down a treat

Shortly before Christmas I had an email from Gran Jo wishing me an enjoyable Christmas - "Vancouver style, whatever that is". That got me thinking. What exactly was a Vancouver Christmas? I decided that it would probably be a vegetarian dinner, a mountain hike with an intense yoga session at the top, followed by an ice hockey game with the family. Unfortunately I wasn't going to be able to complete all of these things but I was able to tick one of the boxes as Rita kindly invited me round to her place on Christmas Eve for a vegetarian Christmas dinner and drinks with her and her friend, Matt. So I got to try my first Tofurkey (a tofu turkey) and it was actually really nice. Rita is a good cook! I was absolutely stuffed afterwards but I'd left enough room for a few glasses of wine and an interesting shot of a Chinese spirit called Red Star (56% vol!). I've never seen a more pained face than Matt's as his did that shot! Hilarious!

Rita's all-vege Xmas dinner

 

The offending Chinese alcohol - Merry Christmas, Liver.

Christmas Day was kind of strange as it was the first time I've been away from my family in my whole life! Luckily (for me) Dan had to cancel his trip to Kelowna so I wasn't on my todd for the day. I was also happy that I'd received a couple of gifts so I had something to unwrap in the morning.

Gifts! :)

In the evening I went with Dan for a gathering and meal at his colleague's apartment in downtown Van. Any kind of meat cravings I may have had from the night before were well and truly sated as the guys had cooked up an absolute stormer of a Christmas dinner. If I recall correctly there were 5 different meats in the turkey and all the trimmings were done to perfection. Turns out it's good to have chef friends!

Plenty of food and plenty of drink later, everyone was crashed out in front of that classic Christmas movie, Die Hard. Awesome times. Thanks to Taylor for hosting!

The beast!

Awesome Christmas food. Great effort, guys!

Wish I could taste it again!

The sound of silence as everyone tucks in.

After Christmas it was back to the grind at Hermes. Nothing too exciting to report here but I did manage to get another nationality was ticked off the food list one lunchtime - Korean. No, it wasn't dog before you ask.

Spicy Korean broth

New Years Eve soon rolled round. I had been hoping to go to see Tiesto and Garth Emery, who were DJing at the Vancouver Coliseum, but I was too indecisive and tickets got super-expensive a few days before. I thought that it would probably be wiser to save the money for travels rather than blow a huge amount on New Years Eve. I know it would have been an awesome night but decided to head downtown instead. I met Dan at the place he works, The Corner Bar, to get some food, get the liquor flowing and watch the Canucks game. I ended up staying the night there after Dan left to go to a houseparty elsewhere, meeting a few random crazy Canadians and a little later bumping into Adam and Armin who had been at Taylor's Christmas meal. Had a great time and didn't spend too much. Perfect.

I set myself a little New Year challenge of trying to eat Vegetarian for the month of January. It's mostly to see if I feel any difference and it also seems to be one of Vancouver's 'things' (when in Rome, etc). It's gone fine so far and I've managed to stick to it. I haven't gone hardcore and straight to veganism, sticking with Lacto-ovo vegetarianism for now but I haven't felt too much of a difference to be honest. I'm going to stick it out anyway! I've been hitting the gym hard since the turn of the year also so I've kept my calories and protein up in other ways, so I haven't lost any weight. Mum seems to think I'm looking terribly thin on Skype but I can assure you I'm still up at 210lbs+, so I can't be that bad!!

Talking of Skype, I finally managed to catch up with a few people from home in the past couple of weeks. Aaron, Nick, Mark Step, even Malin and Maria who were visiting home from Sweden. Good to see a few familiar faces!

Boney took me for Dim Sum at the Victoria resturant for lunch earlier this week. Super stuff. She goes there so much she's basically a VIP and always gets super service and loads of free dishes! I'll have to return for the meat-eaters version in February! I'm a real whizz with the chopsticks nowadays I can tell you.

Vegetarian dim sum

So, yea, that's about it! The winter is getting a bit dull and I'm looking forward to the spring and getting involved in the outdoor acitivities Vancouver has to offer. We've had some snow and it looks like more is forecast. Unlike home a bit of snow doesn't shut the whole country down. Oh, and it looks like Dan and I are finally getting a new flatmate. Will keep you posted on that one!

We had 3-4 inches of snow the other night in Edmonds

Catch you soon,
Simon x

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