Vancouver Cunacks vs Chicago Blackhawks!

So this was one of the more exciting things that happened in the past few weeks.

On Monday night I had just got home from work and was kinda dicking around before I had a shower. I then get a call from Sarah at 6:40pm and had the following conversation:

Sarah: "Hey, what are you up to? Have you got anything on tonight?"

Me: "Um, just got home, about to take a shower, I don't have anything planned"

"Do you wanna go to the Ice Hockey? I have free tickets"

"Shit Yeah! When does it start"

"in 20 min, I'll meet you at Stadium Chinatown skytrain station, txt me when you get on the train"

So I sorted my shit out in record time and we got to the game at 7:05pm. Unfortunately we missed the opening which is apparently pretty awesome but that just means I'll have to go to another game some time. I hadn't even watched from start to finish on TV before so I was pretty stoked to be there. The atmosphere was incredible. Apparently there is a fair bit of rivalry between Chicago and Vancouver but it was a surprisingly clean match (as clean as Ice Hockey can get!), there were no fights!

The story behind the tickets were Sarah's CEO had given her tickets a couple of months ago to pass on to one of the Principals in her office, she had emailed them both of the Principals telling them she had two tickets and they could take someone to the game. No one got back to her and she totally forgot she had them until 6:30pm on game night! She had quickly called them to see if they could find anyone they wanted to give the tickets and no one came through so she got them. Pretty awesome!

Even more awesome was that the Canucks won, find below proof with "Fin" celebrating. Great night. Thanks Saz!

Sun Run and a Ceasar

Very short post.

On Saturday Vancouver held the sun run which has the highest number of competitors in North America or something. I think there was about 50000 people that did it. When I was talking to someone about it earlier in the year it didn't really sound like much fun considering I am used to running alone on forest trails and running with 49999 other people on a road seemed a bit of a stretch but when I saw it  I decided I should probably enter next year. I tried to take a photo but it doesn't do it justice at all:

It was very cool to see so many people out giving 10km a go.

On the strength of that Sarah and I felt pretty tired and decided that we needed to do something productive too so we went and got ingredients to make tasty beverages and carried out our plan superbly:

Cheers!

Kelowna

So it has definitely been too long since I wrote one of these and I guess the risk is that I can just write off doing it. I seriously considered about just keeping my photos as a record of what I have been up to but I figure that is kind of a cop-out so I am gonna write a couple of blogs about what I have been up to over the past couple of weeks. In general work has been pretty slow. We are in a bit of  lull at the moment with many people around the office short of work. There are a few things coming down the pipe line that would mean that KCB would actually need to hire more people though. When I had my three month probationary meeting my boss seemed a bit apologetic about the work load at the moment which shows that he is keen to keep me interested which is good. This is just how consulting goes I guess.

I also met with HR and have started the permanent residency ball rolling so that I don't get kicked out in November. KCB will pay for the whole thing and there will be a bonded period but I can buy my way out of it if I want to so I don't feel too locked in anywhere. It is kinda weird thinking about getting permanent residency here but it is just the next logical step so that I can stay and so that my professional registration fees are cheaper. Sorry to anyone that thought I might have had enough by the end of the year and come home!

13/04/13

I chucked a date in there because it was a while ago now. Me and Sazza drove over to Kelowna which is roughly 3 and a half hours east of Vancouver. The drive was pretty awesome through the Coquihalla highway. The road gets up pretty high (around 1300m I think) and is pretty renowned for crazy ass weather. On the way through we had snow, fog, rain and sunshine.

We were supposed to have pretty crap weather there but luckily we had a nice afternoon on Saturday so I went for a 20km run which was pretty fun. Took a photo:

Nice country side. The whole town is a pretty relaxed place and has a very high retired population. There is a beautiful lake just beside the town and in summer the population of the place nearly doubles.

On Saturday night we had some drinks and played some board games and guitar. The next day we played some corn-hole which basically involves you chucking sacks at a board with a hole in it. You get point for getting the sack on the board and 3 points for getting a bag in the hole. I look forward to getting back there when it is stinking hot and drinking a couple beers over a good game of c'hole.

You Know You Wanna Come to Vancouver...

So this is my advertisement for Vancouver so that everyone comes to check out this awesome city. I took all these in one afternoon wandering around the water front of downtown:

Harbour Green Park looking south towards downtown:

Harbour Green Park looking East along the waterfront:

Just beside the Vancouver Convention Center looking South towards downtown:

Douglas Couplands Pixel Orca:

Vancouver Harbour looking North towards North Vancouver:

George Wainborn park looking North East towards downtown.

Burrard Skytrain Station in full bloom:

Looking South West towards Burrard Bridge:

Sunset Beach looking North West. I think it is either part or the north shore mainland or Bowen Island in the distance:

English Bay laughing guys:

Random tree with blossums:

Victoria

For Easter I went to Victoria with Sarah to have a look around. It was pegged to be stupendous weather and it wasn't lying. We caught the ferry over at 10am on Friday morning and it was a pretty nice 3 hour trip that wound its way through some islands. Sarah warned me that it was pretty expensive to take a car and I laughed when the bill was $80 for both of us and the car! A little bit cheaper than the interislander... 

In the afternoon we went for a wander down the Fishermans wharf and saw some interesting stuff like this crazy bike hanging on the side of a house boat which is literally a house built on a floating foundation. I don't think it has a motor or anything. Kinda crazy.

We found some wild life and were lucky enough to be there at feeding time:

After that we went in search of some tasty beer at a pub and I had a nice wee drop of Phillips IPA.


On Saturday we went for a wander up Mt Finlayson which is in gold steam park. It was a very nice forest walk up to the summit:

Towards the top it got really steep and rockey. Some rock climbing skills were employed and it wasn't really for the feint of heart as the drop off were pretty steep. Lots of people of all abilities were up there though which was pretty cool. As you can see the weather really turned it on for us and we had another cracker day. I believe that the mountain in the distance is Mt Baker, one of my goals while I live here.

In the evening we went for another wander around the city and found the B.C. Parliament building:

It looked really cool all lit up but the photo doesn't really do it justice. Later on we met up with a couple of people from work, Brian and Atalla, who have recently relocated from Scotland for work. We all had a pretty good time talking shit and making drunken plans to embark on a road trip to Seattle some time.

We caught the ferry back to Vancouver at midday on Sunday to round of a really awesome weekend. Here's hoping summer brings a million more clear days like that!

The Chief

On the 24th of March (a while ago now) I went for a walk up a mountain thing called The Chief with some friends. Allegedly it is the second largest monolith in the world. Not too much to report on the walk so here are some photos from the trip:

Colourful rock things were pretty cool:

There are kinda 3 peaks you can go up to aptly named first second and third peak. We decided to go up to second peak. In the below picture we went up to the rocks to the right and first peak was up to the left. I think to get to third peak you carry on up from second peak.

Needless to say there was a pretty sweet view from the top. This is looking across at first peak:

I also found some logging for dad dad: