VanAussie Daily

Emergency personnel over response

Wednesday, March 24th, 2010

So this is in no way intended to be a slight on the emergency personnel over here in Vancouver, but nowhere else have I seen a propensity to send multiple response vehicles to the simplest of accidents. Just went downstairs to get some milk and there was a cop car, ambulance and a full size fire engine parked out the front of the store, all lights blazing. They were taking statements, redirecting traffic and keeping a careful watch over those who had just been in the incident.

What was the incident?

A light rear ender. One car had its front bumper hanging off, no other damage, and the other car had no damage whatsoever, just white push marks on its rear bumper. I guess its a case of being safe rather than sorry, but I know in Australia they’d be sorting themselves out on the side of the road, swapping insurance details, and presenting themselves to their GP the next day if they had a sore neck from whiplash.

I’ve actually seen this multiple times, like the four cop cars and an ambulance that were crowded around another rear ender the other day. Perhaps a little over protective and over serving?

Like

Unlike

Posted in Downtown Vancouver | No Comments »

House hunting, pt1

Friday, March 19th, 2010

We’ve been on the lookout for a new apartment recently here in Vancouver for various reasons, with one of the principle reasons being that our current apartment was sold and the new owners want to move in. How rude. So that got me thinking about all the little intricacies that you find out when you’re looking for a place over here that are different to looking for a place in Australia. Here’s a couple I can think of off the top of my head:

1. 98%* of rentals start and finish on the first of the month. This seems to be a rule that’s been around and accepted, and on various levels it makes sense, however when many people are moving out on the morning of the first and into their apartment on the afternoon of the first, this can cause problems. It also causes problems for those who have to move out of their apartment on the last day of the month because the landlord wants to do some reno’s before the new tenants move in the next day. There’s a few people who sleep in a truck with all their stuff because of this.
2. A high proportion of rentals are apartments. I’m a Tassie boy, and where I come from, if you’re in an apartment you’re just not trying hard enough. Unless it’s a cool one. It’s the other way round here. Most houses in the price range of traveling and working Aussies are older and a bit more run down, as well as usually being massive and expensive and end up being share houses because of this. Apartments are the way to go over here, unless you can afford a “condo”, or slightly bigger apartment that might have floors and it’s own front door. If you actually own a house, it can be seen as a bit of a status symbol, as they are so freakin expensive.
3. Property is freakin expensive in the downtown areas. Our current apartment is 530 square feet (tiny one bedroom, but built in 2006) or so, and it sold for about $460,000.

I’m going to tell you a story. It’s about a boy and a girl who decided to move to Canada because it’s a fantastic idea and they’d both worked there before and loved it. This story is going to have several parts (probably three) as I’ll tell you about each apartment they’ve rented so far (or are just about to rent), how they found them, how they lived in them, and how they found their most recent one. Just to keep things sensible and in order around here, I’ll start with their first apartment in Canada.

One day in mid April, 2008, the boy and girl got off the airplane in Vancouver airport. They were bleary eyed from lack of sleep, and also readjusting to western culture again after spending two long flights on Air China with an overnight stopover in Taipei. A friend of the boy, let’s call him Gerhard, from when he had been staying in Canada had offered to meet them at the airport and for them to stay at his place for a few weeks till they got on their feet and found a place. They all went home and had curry and caught up on 10 years of news  while Gerhard and Natalia adjusted to the atmosphere in the northern hemisphere.

The condo G&N were staying in was in the Metrotown area of Burnaby, about here in fact, and while they loved staying with these friends, getting out and about, touring Metrotown (BC’s biggest mall!), they were also used to having their own space. They started poring over newspapers for apartments, trawling job websites, going through the highs and lows that come with not having work and being in a new city. In particular they had lots of free time but needed to be tight with money till they found work, which proved to be a little frustrating.

As the boy and girl had arrived in the middle of the month, and Vancouver had weird rules about apartments only becoming available on the first of the month, they were able to look online at lots of places, but getting showings was a little more difficult. The other problem was, “where would they actually want to live?” If they lived downtown, then they would be right in the center of the action, but rent was expensive and neither of them had jobs yet. If they lived in Burnaby near their friends, then rent would be cheaper and they would know someone in the area. Added to this, neither of them knew where they would end up working, so they couldn’t get a place near to their potential employer, and so they could only try and get somewhere on the public transport grid.

They chose to live in the Metrotown area. It all made sense really, as there was the Skytrain line to take them downtown quickly and easily, Metrotown was right there for anything they needed when setting up the house, they had friends in the area, and there was a reasonable potential that they might both get work in that ‘hood.

Their friends had told them that Craigslist was the place to look for housing. What?! They thought? What is this website? They had never heard of it before. So they picked up a couple of local papers and called around. Every apartment was taken by the time they called. They took the advice of their friends and looked up Craigslist and found lots of different apartments coming up for rent on the first. Three of them sounded reasonable and within the $800 to $900 price range they thought they could afford, with two only a few blocks away. They walked by the close two, and weren’t that impressed. They called and arranged appointments, and were quite unimpressed with what they found inside the two apartments.

While they were clean (mostly), each had its own faults. One was on a noisy intersection, and the other was, well… dingy and pokey and the landlady was a weirdo. They went home and re-evaluated what they could afford. How long would their savings last if they didn’t get work, but took on a more expensive apartment?

They decided to give the last apartment in their original price bracket a chance, although it was quite a walk away. They met the nice landlord out front, and he took them to the ground floor apartment. As they entered, it just felt… right. It was about 900 square feet, had a large patio, fresh paint, big living room for friends to stay over, a kitchen that did the job, and the landlord was in the process of upgrading the bathroom. It wasn’t an amazing apartment, but it was in their price bracket and as it was already empty, they could move in a couple of days early.

As their move in date came closer, they went to Metrotown and bought their first Canadian home furnishings. Namely some towels and what Canadians call “a bed in a bag”, which is a set of sheets, a summer weight (thin) doona/quilt and a couple of cushions. Cheap, but it did the job. They planned for hours what they were going to do with the apartment, argued over how big certain nooks and crannies were, how much room there was under the shower head (they were both about six feet tall, and the shower head was built for hobbits) and what they should buy for the apartment and what they could do without.

Finally it came! The day they could move in! They loaded their backpacks and took the bed-in-a-bag under their arms and trooped over to the apartment. The landlord was already there and handed them the keys. Entering the apartment for only the second time, they put down their backpacks, looked around, looked at each other, hugged, then constructed the cushions from their bed-in-a-bag into a little couch and sat down in their empty apartment. All was good in the world.

Over the next year Natalia, Gerhard and the Burnaby apartment made many happy memories together. Here are but a few memento’s:

The living room after a couple of trips to IKEA and raiding cheap stuff off Craigslist

The kitchen, including free microwave, free shelving unit and free desk

Bob the snowman on the patio

Christmas Day 2008

Some serious snow in the 2008 winter. People ask "where were you when the big snow hit?". Gerhard trying to find Bob. He's under there somewhere...

Australia Day 2009. The BBQ was Gerhard's first Canadian "luxury" purchase.

To be continued… next stop, Yaletown!

(*that’s a fact, that is.)

1 person likes this post.

Unlike

Posted in Different things in Canada, Musings, Shopping | No Comments »

Early Spring

Thursday, March 18th, 2010

Today was one of those perfect spring days we get here in Vancouver, blue skies, warm in the sun, chilly in the shade. It’s funny though, as we’re still officially in winter!

So that’s one of the reasons why I was walking down the hallway into my office today, looked outside and thought “holy shit, it’s SNOWING!!”

Of course, it wasn’t snow, it was petals… here’s the culprit:

One of the things that really sets Vancouver apart from other cities in the spring is the masses of Japanese Cherry Trees planted on the streets and in the suburbs. There’s rows of them over in East Vancouver, and you can tell who parks their cars on the street over night, as their cars are littered with petals in the morning at work. It’s so pretty, and it usually only lasts for a couple of weeks each year. They even have a Cherry Blossom festival! Of course, that’s a bit hard to schedule in conjunction with the blossoms themselves, as they tend to come about when they feel like it, and not on any schedule… like this year, they’re flowering quite early as we’ve had such a mild winter. They’re a little confused.

(That’ pics actually from a few days ago, hence the damp ground and storm clouds…)

Like

Unlike

Posted in Different things in Canada, Downtown Vancouver, scenery | No Comments »

Skiing Mount Seymour

Tuesday, March 16th, 2010

Note, All images are now clickable… click them to make them bigger and bask in their glory*!

One of the great things about living in Vancouver is that we have three ski mountains on the North Shore. That’s about 20 – 30 minutes drive away. Doing the speed limit. Which nobody in Vancouver seems to do.

When the snow is good, they’re a fantastic spot to get away to for a day on the weekend. You can pick your mountain and your spot, and typically the lines won’t be too bad. For example, we hit up Mount Seymour this weekend as the North Shore mountains had about 1.5m of snow in the week leading up. Yep, that’s right, 150cm. That just about made up for the very average winter they were having to that point. While the lines for the main lift were quite long, there’s a lift over the back called Brockton Chair, and we skied that for most of the day, and very, very rarely had to wait in line.

Yes, the mountains are smaller than, say, Whistler, but Whistler is twice the price, more than two hours away, and a serious day trip. It’s quite fun skiing a small chair too, if it’s going quick enough, as you never cool down on the chair, and you can pick out all sorts of interesting runs on the way back up again.

The snow was great btw

Here’s some happy snaps:

On the way up Brockton Chair, Mount Seymour

Brockton Chair, Mount Seymour

Mt Baker from the top of Brocton Chair Mount Seymour March 2010

And a quick panorama from the top, just to give you a feel for things – make sure you click it!

Panorama of Brocton Chair, Mount Seymour, March 2010

*Glory results of individual photos may vary…

2 people like this post.

Unlike

Posted in Downtown Vancouver, scenery, Sport | No Comments »

Paralympics – Sledge Hockey

Saturday, March 13th, 2010

We got to go see a Paralympic event today – Sledge Hockey!

This is basically the equivalent to ice hockey, but where the people playing are seated on metal framed sleds with two inline ice skates underneath. They get around by using two small hockey sticks which have some sort of grippy surface at one end (tungston?) at one end, and hockey stick ends on the other. Basically they have to ski as hard as they can to get around, then switch to he hockey stick when they actually want to hit the puck. Here’s a pic of one:

It’s a pretty amazing sport, which involves some fairly brutal hits, but also some ponderous moves, as they can’t get around on the ice very quickly, and if they lose the puck out the back end when moving it down the ice, it takes them a while to turn around and get it again.

The time these guys spend on the ice is amazing too – I think it might be longer than regular NHL, but one guy did 41 minutes out of 60 in 7 shifts. That’s a lot of high energy time on the ice!

We saw Norway vs Sweden, and it was a great game. Really close, with the score even at the end of regular time, then even again at the end of 5 minutes of sudden death. It went to shootout (best of three, one on one), and that was even right through till the last attempts on goal – here’s a swedish guy celebrating a goal:

Norway won the day though, with the Norwegian goalie keeping the last shot out (being a goalie in sledge hockey would be a really freakin’ tough job, as they are nowhere near as manouverable as regular goalies, yet have the same size net). This led to  game of “stacks on” of course, although I felt bad for the Swedish team – Norway is one of the top teams in the world, and Sweden fought their way through the qualifiers to get here.

Here’s a quick pano of Thunderbird Stadium too, where the match was held (click it!):

1 person likes this post.

Unlike

Posted in Sport, Winter Olympics | No Comments »

Camping at Harrison Lake

Thursday, March 11th, 2010

Camping… in winter?!

Going camping in the middle of winter is not usually one of the top rated ideas in Canada, and when I mentioned last week to coworkers and others that we were heading for the hills on the weekend they did give me a look like I was one beer short of a six pack, however there was some method to our madness:

The weather over the last few weeks has been amazingly mild, in fact they’re saying that it has been one of the mildest winters on record… typical that we get it for the Winter Olympics of course… Still, it’s makes for great weather to get out and about in! We also car camp, so everyone is sleeping in their vehicles, which means nobody has to deal with sleeping on the ground and damp tents in the morning.

Saturday had to have been one of the nicest days in quite a while, and with Nat away in Australia (she took the camera too, which is why I’ve been borrowing pictures from everyone) my friend Amy filled in. Well, she was full of bubbles about the weather, the flowers all coming out because they think it’s spring (fools, it’s gone cold again now) and all the beautiful snow on the amazing mountains.  I also got her hopped up on coffee before the drive, so the combination made for an entertaining trip!

Anyhoo, Harrison is about 2 hours east of Vancouver, so within an easy drive. Distances are all relative over here, as in Tasmania where I’m from, you’d be on the other side of the state in two hours, whereas we’ve only made it out of the ‘burbs and into the first mountain range in that time. We wanted to head up the west road beside Harrison Lake, so headed out the highway to Harrison, checked the town for a whole five minutes (resort town, not much to it), then went and found the forestry road, which actually starts some distance from Harrison itself. The road winds its way north beside the lake, and when open (it’s blocked by a land slide at the moment) it can actually take you right through to Pemberton, north east of Whistler, if you have a suitable vehicle.

We found a nice camping spot on a wide rocky beach about half way up and parked up there for the afternoon – because of the mountains you lose the sun at about 3 or 4, so we wanted to hang out and enjoy it while we could.

A campfire on the beach certainly made the trip very memorable too. It was so nice watching the sun go down on the mountain, the stars come out, and the lake get darker and darker.

(Thanks to Amy and Aidan for the pics : )

2 people like this post.

Unlike

Posted in Downtown Vancouver | No Comments »

Teppanyaki

Monday, March 8th, 2010

If you’ve never had the north-americanised version of Japanese teppanyaki, I’d highly suggest it! It basically turns your meal into a spectator sport, bringing the chef out of kitchen and setting him behind a grill that everyone sits around. His mission is to cook while entertaining the crowd, and this is through a variety of tricks and a consistent flow of food.

The food typically isn’t very Japanese-ey, with our local place (Osaka, on West Broadway in Vancouver) offering the choice between vegetarian, seafood, chicken, steak or a combination of the above. Everyone gets prawns/shrimp and vegetably stuff throughout as part of the deal too.

The whole reason for going is the experience, so we only head there perhaps once or twice a year, but it’s a great place to take folks who are new to the city… particularly when the chef gets the flare-ups happening!

1 person likes this post.

Unlike

Posted in Downtown Vancouver, Food | No Comments »

POWS – Post Olympic Withdrawal Syndrome

Thursday, March 4th, 2010

I can’t believe this is the last post I’ll write about the Olympics in Vancouver. The Paralympics are coming up, but they don’t quite have the same buzz to them.

Going back to the weekend, if I thought that the crowds were madness on Friday night, then Sunday afternoon and evening were absolute insanity!

I think a large amount of Canadians (and token Canadians like myself) had been building towards this last day and the Hockey Gold Medal Final, which thankfully Team Canada made it into, facing Team USA. If we hadn’t made it, who knows what the city would have felt like…

It’s an apt description that you can judge the mood of this city by how its hockey team is doing, and no time more so than during the Olympics. When we lost to the USA the first time, everyone was in a dark and somber mood. After winning the Gold Medal, the whole city was basically ecstatic! Every car was honking its horn randomly, people were high fiving strangers anywhere you go, individuals were out in the middle of nowhere, just waving giant Canadian flags in joy.

The celebration continued into the night too. The opening ceremony came and went, and people were still celebrating the hockey win, that the Olympics had gone well, and just life in general. As I’ve mentioned before, we’re close to party central downtown, and the noise right through the night was intense.

The streets were flooded with people. We went for a wander just to take it in, and there were so many more people than Friday night! Everyone put on their special gear and got out and about – I even high fived a dude in a big gorilla suit! Honourable mention also goes to the guy with the Inukshuk Vancouver Olympic symbol on his head, made out of spray painted cardboard boxes.

Then came Monday. The city was quiet. Most people had slept in. People looked at me strangely when I went to get my coffee from JJ Bean in the morning because I had chosen to wear my Team Canada jersey one last time to celebrate the win… at least, I think it was the jersey.

It seemed like everyone had a hangover – so many people had been pushing it as much as they could during the Olympics, being out late at night, getting up early in the morning for events and to do the odd bit of work, and now that the games were over, life caught up with them again.

Now there are no more street parties. They’re taking down all the tent venues that sprang up. Strangers no longer high five in the street for no reason. The city has gone back to how it was before the Olympics almost over night.

Well… not quite… there’s still some fun in the air, and I think this city has learned that it can put on a fantastic international event and bask in the spotlights glow. That Olympic fun is still there, you just have to know how to find it and pry it out of the people of Vancouver. It’ll reappear, I guarantee it. After the hangover disappears, and the Stanley Cup Playoffs start looming

(Pics courtesy of Aidan Ward)

1 person likes this post.

Unlike

Posted in Downtown Vancouver, Musings, Winter Olympics | 2 Comments »