Waitangi Day

So I have been trying to catch up with the guy that helped my find my job by sending me a list of engineering companies in Vancouver for a while but he is pretty busy. This week he asked me if I was going to the Waitangi day event at a downtown pub. I hadn't heard about before he told me but my reply was hell yeah! It was at a place called "The Library Square Public House". I got down there at 10:45am and it was great to finally meet Paul. He was with a bunch of ex-Canterbury University Engineers too so it was cool talking to a few of them. Paul was actually the same year in Electrical as the guy whose role I took when I started with Marlborough Lines.

Then event was awesome. The pub had apparently cleaned out the whole area's supply of Steinlager pure and we drank it all by 3pm. At 11:30am there was a welcome Powhiri by the Vancouver kapa haka group (which apparently exists!) and there was also a few Waiata and a haka. They had a couple of special items on the menu for us as well including meat pies and sausage-in-a-piece-of-bread. The event T-shirt was a nice Marino one with a Kiwi-Canada design on it so I had to buy one of those. I met a bunch of cool people but realised how hard it is to make good friends. I had a good chat to a bunch of people but don't know how many of them I will see again. I was stoked to have a yarn to a guy about the whole Canadian engineer iron ring thing (google it) who told me that he is going to go through the ceremony soon to get one even though his degree is from NZ. I'll definitely have to look into that and get me one of those.

I also discovered one thing that I miss from NZ and that is hearing kiwi music. A lot of people complain that NZ music is crap and the only reason its on the radio is because its law but I don't care, its cool that we hear it so much in NZ. The pub played Kiwi music all day, from Shihad to Shapeshifter to Kora to Crowded house. I might be biased but I reckon we have a bunch of good music. I know a few people would give me shit for saying that but I just reckon they would miss it too if they were overseas.

The pub also played classic TV advertisements and montages of movies and TV series on the TV system. It was pretty weird watch Vancouver TV's broadcasting Trumpet ads (togs, togs, togs, undies), Lift+ sharpen up ads, Outrageous Fortune, Footrot Flats among others.

I stayed at the pub until about 11pm at which point I went to hunt some food with some other Canadians. I had a tasty burger for dinner with them before having to leave so that I didn't miss the last skytrain. I crawled into bed at about 1am with mixed feelings about the day. It was a great event but it made me realise how isolated I still feel here, and how much energy I still need to put into meeting people. But that's OK cos I like a challenge and its not like I have another choice as an extrovert. I look forward to next years event that will probably feel significantly different by "being a good time with friends" instead of "another opportunity to meet people".

One thing is for sure though: I'm definitely proud to be a Kiwi.