VanAussie Daily

Weet-bix equivalents in Canada

Tuesday, July 6th, 2010

One of the things that I went on a mission to find when I got to Canada was to find a good stand-in for my old staple breakfast cereal, Weet-bix.

Well, actually I got stuck into their sweet stuff like granola (equivalent if muesli, kinda) and their cereals… Mmm, nothing like that crispy sugar high in the morning to get you going! Captain Crunch was a particular favourite, although it really resembles nothing natural.

Then I got over the sweet things and wanted to get back to simple life, something I could have that was a good bit of low-GI energy to keep me going during the day. Although reflecting on that last sentence, I may have been swayed by advertising.

Anyhoo, I needed Weet-bix. There is no exact equivalent over here, but there are some that come pretty close. I’ve included the price in the pics, but they’re pretty damn similar anyhoo. First one I found was:

Muffets
Despite the curious name, these aren’t too bad. They’ll fill the bottom of your bowl, but they’re just a touch crispy. This means that they will hold their form for your whole breakfast, no matter how much milk you soak them in. Taste? Well… Not too much really.

Shredded wheat
A slightly larger “pillow” than Weet-bix, these will keep their shape and taste slightly bland like Muffets, but they offer a better mouth feel (I can’t believe I just wrote that) than Muffets. I have had one of the strange wheat based tendrils spear up my gum before, which I can tell you wasn’t too pleasant. The things I do for you guys!

Weetabix
Probably the closest things to Weet-bix you’ll find in Canada, these fellas have a similar texture to Weet-bix however you’ll find that they quickly disintegrate into mush when milk is added. Similar sort of taste though, just a tad sweeter. Don’t mind these and they are my current breakfast basis of choice

(Don’t worry, the other side is in English if you can’t work out the tough French translation)

Oatibix
Just to throw an extra one in the mix, these are basically the same as Weetabix, but made of Oats. They’re pretty good, have a nice flavour, but man, do they ever turn to mush faster than you can get your spoon out of the drawer after pouring the milk.

No pic of these, as Safeway was out of stock when I had the brainwave for this fantastic culinarily inspired post.

…

This was a privately funded research project, and hence that allows me to tell you what I’ve had for breakfast
And yes, culinarily is a word. I just made it up then.

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Newspaper Highwaymen

Tuesday, June 29th, 2010

In the early hours of the Vancouver weekday morning they wait. They watch. They lurk on the street corners, near Skytrain entrances and public thoroughfares.

Their prey is the Morning Commuter, typically identified by the freshly coifed hair, coffee in one hand, bag of work on their shoulder they didn’t do the night before, and a faint smell of sleep not quite forgotten.

The moment comes. Commuters pour from their chosen mode of transportation and the Newspaper Highwaymen pounce in a feeding frenzy, pushing their brand of free morning newspaper at anyone who will even glance infield direction. They’re not aggressive though, no, they choose the passive means of building their prey into taking the paper, fixing their target with a stare while invitingly proffering the rolled up paper in their general direction.

Commuters, stuck in that moment of confusion having just emerged from the dark halls of car parks and underground transit stations, blink and take the paper, plaintively trying to fit it into their hands between their overfull coffee cup and that heavy, heavy bag.

Success for the Highwaymen, once again, they retire to their hiding places, and wait for the next wave of confused Commuters.

The Commuters race on their way, feeling the bundle of slightly coffee stained paper under their arms with all that potentially interesting news. When they get a moment they open it up to see if the articles, ads and columns are at all interesting today.

Flick, flick, flick. Nothing.

The commuters find an opportune place to prop the paper, on seats, ledges, or any flat surface. Perhaps another of their kind will find it and the news will interest them? Paper is too valuable, after all, to just toss in the bin moments after it was gifted upon you.

…

While this may be an overly dramatic portrayal, it is pretty funny to watch the same story played out every morning. The daily rags Metro and 24 Hours are both printed 7 days a week, and these folks are employed to give as many as they can away to commuters. While there can be some reasonable content, they’re free for a reason! Still, we found them valuable when moving, as they also have boxes of the papers on street corners everywhere around the city… grab a handful and you’ve got some great packing material

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Dentist

Friday, June 4th, 2010

One of the things about settling down somewhere that you didn’t grow up in is that you have to find all the essential basic services again. You know, doctors, mechanics, coffee shops and dentists.

Now, with most of these things I’ll typically follow the same thought path (except coffee shops, they’re an A1 priority). I’ll put it off till I can no longer put it off, then get sick of putting it off and go to whoever is closest. After being screwed over by whoever was closest I’ll start asking around to find a good provider, find one, then end up giving them all my business.

I recently went through this process to find a dentist, except this time I got smart and asked friends for referrals. I ended up getting in to see my bosses dentist, after he told me that he went through the same process as above 15 years ago, and this guy was good.

I also learned that BC MSP doesn’t cover dental. At all. “Egads, how expensive will this be?” I thought, as all my front lower teeth were aching like bastards, and I was assuming the worst – take em all out and replace them with diamond tipped, titanium core incisors – “sorry sir, this is the cheapest we have” I could hear them sniggering as I lay awake at night, teeth hurting. It probably didn’t help that I hadn’t been to the dentist in at least 5 years.

Still, my teeth hurt, so I had to go to the dentist.

I rock into the appointment, prepared for the worst. I had actually queried how much I was in for before I booked the appointment, and they told me it would be $80 plus another $80 if I needed xrays. That sounded good. However, I don’t trust dentists, as (in my mind at least) they have a cheap first consultation price to lure you in, then you’re doomed to spend the next 10 years in their clutches doing reconstructive and preventative checkup after checkup.

I get ushered into the room with the chair. It’s comfy. It’s got this view:

How many dentists have you been to that have that sort of view?! I get my checkup by the dentist, who turns out to be nice as hell, then he leaves me alone with his techs for them to do an evaluation of previous work and xrays. While they’re away developing the xrays, someone hands me a set of high powered binoculars so I can “have a peep” at what’s happening on the lower mainland.

They’re done, then I wait for the dentist to come back to give me his analysis and prognosis. I check to see if anything interesting is going on in the apartments downtown with the binoculars.

The dentist comes in. Looks at the xrays. Tells me I’m going to have to come back. Yup, cos it’s been 5 years since the last check up, I’ve got a build up of crap in my gums and it’s making my teeth hurt. I only need a clean. No extra appointments, no unobtanium teeth straighteners, no pain. What?!

Cost of the appointment? $130.

No actual dental work needed? Priceless.

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Brush with greatness

Friday, May 28th, 2010

I was mooching around the Safeway supermarket near BC Womens hospital the other day, having managed to get to the hospital cafeteria about 5 minutes too late as per usual. I mean, who closes a cafeteria at 6.30pm?! I’m just getting over lunch by that stage!

Anyhoo, I was cruising the aisles, when I spot a guy toting two very full baskets around with his 5 year old (or so, I’m no expert) daughter in tow. His daughter was having the time of her life… why? He’d only just before clipped two GIANT helium balloons to the shoulder straps of her summer dress, so that when she walked/ran the balloons bounced and jigged along behind her, kinda like her own private Macy Day Parade. Everyone in the store was watching out of the corners of their eyes as he spots another giant balloon and switches it for one of the ones clipped to his daughters dress.

You could see that he was getting great enjoyment out of it, but he was keeping it to himself, acting to his daughter like this is just what you do when shopping in Safeway, right?

Anyhoo, I then noticed there was something a little familiar about him… It was Daniel Sedin, one of the famed Sedin twins of the Vancouver Canucks ice hockey team! So very cool to see him. Yes, I am a big hockey fan, but it’s also just great seeing folks like that just cruising the stores.

I was quite suprised, as I expected him to be taller too – he’s 6’1″, so only an inch and a half taller than me. For the record, he also buys a lot of juice and yoghurt

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WHP customer service

Tuesday, April 6th, 2010

As I mentioned in my previous Point Roberts post, we’re coming up to our two year anniversary in Canada for this trip, so it’s work permit renewal time.

We did the online interview a couple of weeks ago and got all the required information together, and I mailed it to them using DHL through my work so I could track it. I thought I had read somewhere that applications needed to be in separate packages, so the person who looks after that stuff at work suggested sticking two 8.5×11 (A4 equivalent) envelopes together to save on postage and obey the letter of the law.

The package was delivered after 5 days, and Nat’s permit was approved only about 5 days after that, so really quite quick.

Three weeks went by, and I was getting nervous as I still hadn’t heard about my permit…

I decided that due to daftly sticking the two envelopes together, mine must have been lost, so I assembled another package over the weekend, and the last thing I had to get was a bank cheque as the banks were closed all weekend. At the prompting of friends, I was going to give the Consulate a call in the evening to check if they might be able to find my previous app, but when I checked the website, it said their phone lines are only open 9.30am to 12pm or something like that! Damn! So I shot them an email and resolved to send my new app overnight the next day.

Well, in the morning there were two emails waiting for me. First one came through at 10.30 or so, my time, and said that they would look for my previous app, and not to send another one in. Second one said that they had found it and that they would process it asap. What a relief! They’d overlooked it because of the silly packaging decision.

No word on whether I’ve been approved or not yet, but props to the WHP folks for being on the ball with checking their email. And the moral of the story? Don’t be daft with your postage when sending in your application!

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New ‘hood, new supermarket

Friday, April 2nd, 2010

So we’ve just moved house (more on that in a later blog post when I have more time to think about something other than the bomb shelter the place looks like) and we’ve managed to score a place that is in the “International Village”, and 5 floors above a big supermarket.

Why is that interesting? It’s an aisian supermarket! A whole world of brightly coloured strange looking packets! Wierd ass things in the milk fridge! Plucked ducks (not Plucka Duck) hanging up!

It’s actually quite cool, as they’ve got all sorts of good normal groceries for cheap, and all the vegies are nice and fresh. Then I spotted this at the checkout, and it was on special!

That’s right, Australian abalone. In a can. For $50. On special.

It’s funny, they probably come from my home state of Tasmania, but they’ve come a long way from the ones we used to catch ourselves and stick on the BBQ.

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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.)

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Granville Island

Saturday, February 6th, 2010

We had a pretty easy day today, being Saturday and all. Went for a wander around Yaletown (where our apartment is) in the morning to get a coffee and have a look through the local book store, and then in the afternoon we had to get out of the apartment as it’s for sale at the moment… bloody pushy bloody real estate lady is getting a bit much.

Anyhoo, we went down to Granville Island to have a look at the markets for some  lunch, and Nat is heading back to Australia for a couple of weeks next week, so she was picking up a few gifts for folks at home.

Granville Island is such a nice little spot with a great concentration of interesting shops. Everything from fruit and veg to jewellry, chocolates, pancakes etc. Then in the other more fixed stores scattered around the island you can find a hammock shop, outdoor store, saki distillery and all sorts of fun stuff!

If you’re coming for a visit, it’s well worth a look around. If you’re a local, it’s great to just swing by every now and then… we’re guilty of spending a lot of time in the “kids market” which is a place to get all sorts of toys and games from a few different vendors all under the one roof. Not a black market where you can buy small children…

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Avatar IMAX 3D

Saturday, January 23rd, 2010

So I’ve been trying to get tickets to go see Avatar in Imax 3D for the last couple of weeks, but even though it’s been out for a month already it kept selling out before I got tix… Bastards! Tix would be released 5 days in advance and sell out 4 days in advance, and there’s only one reasonably close IMAX in Vancouver – the one in Richmond.

Still, I finally got tix and we saw it today. Great film! Not sure if it was worth the wait to see it in IMAX though… Probably also because the lineup before us was long even though we got there 40 minutes before it was supposed to start, because this meant that seat choice was a little more limited… Here’s a crap pic of the line in front of us:

So, future learnings for seeing films in Vancouver? Book online & get there early!

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