Week 8 - Crikey: Job Hunting, Christmas and Winter Weather

Hi All,

Been a while, I can't claim that I've been too busy to write recently, I've had time, but a certain density of perceived activity my end needs to be had before I feel I can justify a post. When I think about what I have to write about today, I've been doing a lot, but life has certainly begun to settle down to a daily pace of sorts.

Last time I wrote was just before Halloween, so I'll go by what I've been up to.

Halloween
Was a lot of fun! We all know North American's hit this "holiday" way harder than at home, even though we clearly invented it :P, everyone goes nuts for it! Cuteness factor of the excellent costumes all the kids wear is pretty high, my favourite was seeing a small girl dressed as a companion cube :D

For my part I went to three Halloween parties - naturally, getting good use out of Mine and Danielle's last minute panic costume solution of "walk into the second hand store, grab first costume available".

I went as Kermit the frog


Danielle as a Unicorn.



the costumes were admittedly designed for a 5 year old but that's nothing that a little determination and scissors couldn't sort out, my 3 Halloween parties were:

1)Skytrain party! Dancing on the metro line with a bunch of other random Vancouverites, before hitting bars in the town lots of fun - here's a short video of the happs:



Watch for the entertaining moment where the train heads off from yet another stop causing everyone to scream

Some photos of the night :D





2) Exploring the exciting world of the "walk of lost souls" an entire area of the town given overt to converting backyards and streets into spootakular displays of things, everyone dressed up and walks around exploring! Very cool:













We Went to See Cirque du soleil do "Michael Jackson: The Immortal World Tour"

This was INNNCREDIBLE. THe dancing was just out of this world... I essentailyl can't possibly convey it in words, it was just awesome, it was also in the epic ice hockey arena which was fun to see!



If you have any chance to see this show though it is all kinds of incredible!



Ok!

So on with adventures, November 11th - remembrance day is a larger holiday here as well, taken as a day off by everyone in the US and Canada, so it being a long weekend, our friends Tiff and Winston were headed to Seattle for a short explore and shopping. Being in dire end of new pants and socks Danielle and I decided this seemed like a justifiable reason to cross over to Uncle Sam land, it was excellent to visit, however: pro tip - never attempt to cross the Vancouver Seattle Border on a Holiday weekend, we queued for 6 hours. It was actually ranked among the more difficult border crossings I have experienced, only marginally beaten down to third place by the time I had to hitch a ride in the back of a sheep van to find a man who could stamp me across the Bolivian border.

Once we were there though - fun times were had :D We visited markets where fish were thrown:


and found the original starbucks (I was far too non plussed by the EPIC CROWD OF PEOPLE that had also found the original starbucks, I took a photo anyway)



Briony - an entire shop dedicated to speciality toffee apples, I thought of you!




Found some excellent little drinkeries - played some Pictionary while sipping whisky before heading to a live music bar:

You guys would accept extension cable for extension cord right!?



Got a bit drunk - I put on Winston's hat and immediately became 19% more street




Whisky Tasting!

This was an excellent night where Winston Tiff and I went to a night where you paid £13 to drink as much high class whisky as you could and eat fancy nibbles. It all started off very civilized... it ended with me yelling numbers randomly at a man to win myself a bottle of 10 year old Macallan. Fantastic.


Board Games!

Faced with an exciting lack of demands on my time, I set out to the "meetups" website to find what was going on in Vancouver that I could crash - well, it turns out there is a boardgames meet up group just down the road from me in lovely Kitsilano, I've been to one session and got destroyed at settlers of Catan, I'll be back!


Skiing!
Made it to the hill for the first time, thanks to Tiff, who dropped me a text saying that she was headed to the hill and I should go! Well I agreed, I should, so we went!! It. Was. Awesome. a 40 minute drive, and bam cypress hill - the site of the recent Olympics, and as much fresh powder as you could shake a stick at, glorious.




Don't know if you can see it in this iphone photo - but the carpet of mountains that lay beyond this point was ultra lovely.


So - Less of the photos, more of the Job hunting.

Saying that, here is a photo Danielle took of me on the job hunting prowl one morning - it should be noted that I found a super cheap Vietnamese woman to cut my hair, and have ended up looking like a 1996 member of nsync :( but I found a really nice suit for super cheap also so swings and roundabouts




The bulk of my time in the weekdays in the last 5 weeks has been job hunting. I began with a vengeance and applied to many places and many jobs.

After a fortnight, no one had got back to me and I was quite sad, so I went to check that I was applying correctly. I was not, in anyway, applying correctly. The extent to which job hunting is different here is... extensive. In fact I found an entire website devoted to "applying for a job in Canada when you are British".

Long story short, I made some changes, and started again. My savings last until year end 2011, so I had until then to secure gainful employment... 2 weeks into the new process - success! I had job interviews with a few different people, but I wasn't feeling terribly excited by anything I'd found yet - then entered a new possibility, on a day where I decided to adjust my usual strategy, I wrote to a small tech start up, they develop web and smartphone applications which help people track the origins of their food. This was extra exciting to me because

1)I think food, its origins and the lack of information the consumers have (especially here) is very interesting, so if I could work with it I knew I'd be happy
2) It's a techy company so they are all excellently geeky
3) It's a start up and so you get to be an individual

Hurrah! Not that they actually had a job opening... I wrote to them anyway, and was surprised when they asked me to an informal coffee interview, one interview lead to another, which lead to a fun day working on open data sourcing for the food industry (part of the international open data day), which finally last Friday lead to me chatting to the CEO of the company about what things I could do with them. Well it seems they'd like me to work with them to come and do exactly what it is I want to do (public outreach, marketing and promotional writing)! A small hitch: they can't technically pay me for a while, so I'm going to work with them for free for a while and depending on how they move forward the plan is that they might be able to give me a full time position in 2 months.

Now it's a bit of a risky strategy, especially in light of the fact that a far more regular 9-5 well paying but less exciting job seems to be available for me... do I take the risk, bet on my ideal job and ideal workplace by working for free so I am well placed to take the job in 2 months if it comes to pass? Or do I go the stable road of guaranteed pay checks.

Well it's not even a question really is it? :D To the lands of financial uncertainty I go!

The plan? Work part time with them for free for two months, use my "Technical Consultancy" work with UNICEF, and possibly another part time job here to support myself and take the chance to upgrade to full time and paid if I can!

This is clearly the right choice because all the best stories of career success start something like this, besides if I didn't risk it I'd always wonder if it might have been awesome.

So next week I will start there! The office is in amazing China town which will be fun to work in!

Special thanks goes out to my friend Mike who is teaching me a lot about how to do my current part time job without whom I don't think I would be able to generate income and feed myself.




So - that's the plan.

Danielle's course

...continues to go well, she's just completed her Finals for this semester, and although she is reluctant to ever say it is the best in her class, or top 3 at least, scoring between 95% - 100% on all her tests thus far, although we are still waiting to hear about anatomy which was the hardest of them.

She gets treatment from practitioners in her school if she wants it - here is a photo of her back after a recent session of cupping and Guashu - she wanted me to emphasise how it didn't hurt at all! And felt really good as they were doing it, sort of like a massage that gets inside the muscles. I said it looked like she had been in some kind of terrible accident, but the marks were all but gone by the next day.





As for Vancouver
it remains fun and beautiful and I remain happy - had a stroll yesterday and took these pics of how things have been... nothing will ever stop the people here paddle boarding it seems :)

Week Two

Hey all :)

Just a quick update on week two... so while I've been up to a lot, it's mainly been more exploring. Have been cycling around town to learn the ropes, find the cool places to eat, the fun things to do... also Danielle and I have been on the missino to kit out the flat, it's been fun :)

The flat is excellent, but it's a fairly big space to fill, I'll upload photos of it once we have a few more things. So I guess not too much to report, events of note:

1) Sushi! Vancouver is obsessed with the stuff, and it is cheap as well, we began our mission to explore all local sushi restaurants with the one 2 minutes away from our flat, it was really good - Danielle is still on the mission to convince me it's a good form of food in general, but I'm getting there, enjoying "starter sushi" anyway (which basically involves... crab and avacado in rice rolls as far as I can tell.

2) Thanksgiving dinner! Our friends Tiff and Winston, along with Tiff's dad Yoshi (who helped Danielle by kitting out our place with a lot of great stuff) invited us over to have a delayed thanksgiving - it was fantastic, huge turkeys, lots of stuffing cranberry sauce, and then the different Canadian things:
-Creamed sweetcorn, what is that about? Well it was delicious, they have it instead of bread sauce I think
-Mashed Yam with... wait for it... marshmellow on top... for the main course... yup it was weird, but weirdly tasty
-Pumpkin pie - the classic, and it is pretty great.

Winston had some Remy Martin to close out the whole affair, good time was had by all

3) Sailing Club!
Headed out west along the sea wall to find the community of Jericho and the sailing club there, standard Canadian friendliness, fantastic club with loads of opportunities for dinghy sailing with clubs as well as information on where to sign up as crew on yacht racing on wednesday afternoons... all kicks off in April so for now I wait...

4) More adventures around the city - been taking every opportunity to go for walks and cycles around and have taken a few more pictures, Autumn continues to be stunning in Vancouver - Mainly been exploring the coatline:

The Beach by our house leads around to the city:


Once you get around to the city you can go up over the Burrard bridge and see the view back out to the Pacific:



Oh and while I remember - this is a link to a big panarama I took of Kitsalano (our area) beach at sunset, it's fairly huge, but it gives you a sense of the area, its been my reading spot this week :) You can also see (if you zoom) all the tankers heading out to sea from the industrial side of town:
http://i.imgur.com/15lOn.jpg

On the way back we found a beach dedicated to people with dogs - they were all very happy! It's a good place to hang out if you can't have a pet cause they all come and play with you ^^


Danielle hanging out on her walk to school one day


The only other thing I've been up to which wont really interest most readers of this blog is going on a sort of series of sidequests around the city to collect componenets to build my new PC. Craigslist (North American gumtree... not as good as Gumtree >:( ) lets me arrange meets with people and today I managed to get my graphics card (Asus Radeon HD6850) from a guy who turned out to be a Korean and thus an amazing stracraft player (friend aquired +1)


I also have my case and PSU, a few key pieces of that puzzle remaining though... oh yes which finally reminds me the other thing I've been spending lots of time doing - money admin - opening up bank accounts and arranging transfers, hopefully sending them across tonight, although it turns out that the EU crisis meetings has caused the pound to slump so now I'm watching the little currency charts live, like I'm some kind of trader... I'll update next week with tales of Halloween in Vancouver, and further adventures.

Arrival...

I have landed :) Run up to leaving home included a lot of late nights, a lot of goodbyes. and a lot of running around remembering last minute things I had previously forgotten.

Apart from all that though it involved saying farewell to my much loved friends and family, in my case both groups are beyond faultless in their awesomeness and saying goodbye to them was sad indeed - it will be a long time until I get to enjoy the geekiness of the D&D games, and the joy of chatting and tea of coffee with some of the finest minds in the business (that business being life).

I shall miss you guys a lot (those in the photo as well as the ones who couldn't make it):



So... goodbyes were said at airports, nervous immigration queues were waited in (James having helpfully reminded me that the potential for immigration disaster extended well beyond a stern talking to... :P ) nevertheless, having waited for a long time and got to know Mina and her boyfriend (Mina's boyfriend didn't get to say much in the conversation) while waiting, I was accepted into Canada to be a working citizen, and went to meet Danielle at the greeting gates. I was very excited to see her. There was much catching up to be had while we drive around the city with childhood-friend-of-Danielle Tiff (mike met her in London one time)... we drove to Stanly park as the sun set - a point which is essentially a forest preserve in the middle of Vancouver with stunning views out to the Pacfic.

I felt a very long way from the sunrise I had watched heading up the M4 to London that morning. It's an amazing place - huge tankers head out along the shipping lanes and Vanoucver stretches to the mountains on either side - North and South.

Arriving at the flat I bounced around excitedly to find that it was a) very large compared to my expectations (and indeed previous houses of mine) and b) right in the middle of the city which while I knew - didn't quite hit home until I arrived.

Danielle told me to stop bouncing around with excitement because people live below us and I would have to get used to not thumping on their ceiling.

The following couple of days included adventure, sleep, adventure, excitment and adventure - I've been here 2 days now, and its been very adventureful. I bought a bike... I explored teh city on my own while Danielle was at school, I met lots of people because everyone is insanely friendly here, I got a social insurance number (ok that bit wasnt that exciting, but the guy that helped me was still very friendly) and I went to a biiiig big shop to buy ski boots and met a very friendly man and geeked out about skis for a while with him, a conversation whcih included the line "yeah dude, welcome to BC the way they are skiing downhill here is off the hook, let me just say that my waist this year is gonna be around 89mils"

I wasnt entirely sure what he meant so I left to do some reasearch

From here on in, I'll let the pictures do the talking:

Observation no.1 - It feels like I am in GTA the whole time:




The streets around my flat - at the moment Autumn is all in the trees and Vancouver is a very pretty place indeed:







I bought a bike!! There is a bike shop next to our flat - it has the friendliest bike shop assistants known to man, I took my new bike and went on some adventures!



Here's some things I saw:
















Found a piece of home down by Kitsalano beach...


... and worries about the ability to source tea were set aside (note the cuteness of trading since 1995 on the sign...)


Fruit! Granville island market...


Granville island looking back to downtown



Back together :) (d'awww)



Until next time :)

Moving house... the pain

Here we are again, I swear that I move house more often than is

a) Normal
b) Recommended
c) Necessary

But nevertheless, the last one and half hours has been spent on my knees inhaling oven cleaner fumes and developing the headache I now have... for perspective, at times like these cleaning the oven is a break from the other things you've been doing for the last 4567 days (seemingly): packing...

No matter how good I think I could be at packing, at the tail end of it you are always left standing in a almost empty room (yet somehow surround by piles of junk) holding an ornamental egg cup and wondering which box this belongs in, before coming to the inevitable conclusion that it belongs in "any god damn box, I don't care anymore"

This along side an ever increasing urge to just dump everything.

In fact, this (dumping everything) was the approach I though i took this time, I've driven 3 full car loads to the dump, and 2 full car loads to charity shops, I though "I'm not going to take anything with me, I'm just going to start again"

And yet SOME HOW... those "very few ultimately essential things", apparnatly have taken me days to pack, and occupy the entire floor space of the kitchen


God my head hurts... right

The point is... that this is all in aid of the ultimate adventure, and that it's all going ot be worth it...

Vancouver: I am coming!

http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

This is what I shall hold at the front and centre of my mind going forward. Also that I am not locked up in a Thai prison for 6 years like that guy from reddit.

Applications done and dusted

Seems as though the last of the many many parts of my "working holiday" visa application are all sent off, now I sit and wait.

I started the application about a month ago I think, then they go tin touch to request police forms, and then family histories and some certification of how much money I had... I spent a long time bundling it all up and sent it off yesterday (note to self the date was yesterday, for later when I am wondering when it will come back). Quite a relief... oh yes, so on to the next thing, what job shall I get over there - I'm going to record some ideas in this blog.

Areas I'm currently looking at:
-Public relations / communications
-Writing communication of some kind (speech writing? political, lobbying?)
-Developmet (outreach/first nations)
-Energy development (communications?)
-Media?! Journalism (scientific journalism)
-Proposal writing

Ok that's all for now, good progress today, good progress.

They took my rail pass away, dammit

Hi world.

They took my rail pass away. I knew it was coming, but it didn't sting any less. Perhaps I built up this event into a moment of unnecessary unpleasantness, but for whatever reason I had been grimly anticipating this moment for years.

I think it's the naming of it "Young Persons Rail card".

You have one when you are young. It represents societies opinion that "hey, you are just a kid - exploring the world! havea third of rail travel!"

Without it, I have a worrying suspicion I am an adult.

That being the case I have decided to move to Canada. Vancouver specifically.

I know nothing of Vancouver except that

1)It was recently listed as the best city in the world to live in
2)It is by the coast

All indications are that this is going to rock :)

This blog will be the chronical of my attempts to up sticks and move overseas, my trials and tribulations, my battles with visa officials, and my attempts to find a job. I shall post photos and stories and it is all going to go awesome.


Here's to the adventure :D and new beginnings...