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To infinity!.. and... beyond... uh.....

a travel blog by haveyouseenmypassport

Ok, so this is the trip that the pre-trip trip was all about, going to Cananda to start with, Vancouver to be precise and seeing what happens from there. At the end of the day we're going to be ending up Melbourne town, but between the 9th of March now and sometime next year, who knows what could happen right?
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Leaving home again...

Melbourne, Australia

Time to leave the safety of the Ivanhoe nest once more.... I'm going to have to do a Deery and go to Canada then Europe, so it should be most excellent, in the words of Bill and Ted.

Airports suck, but they're the beginning and the end of so many people's journeys I guess it's hard to think they're a bad thing! I used to think that Australian customs were unusually and unnecessarily brash and rude... But I guess they're here for a reason and we need them and if you're going to look like the Crack Addicted alcoholic that I look like then you're going to get some scrutiny... But hey, that's good for all the Mum and Dad drug smugglers who hide their stash in their kids pram and walk straight through customs with a smile on their face and a wave of their hand.

It's all good. Screaming babies on aircraft? Yes please. But that's for installment NUMBER 2.

permalink written by  haveyouseenmypassport on March 9, 2007 from Melbourne, Australia
from the travel blog: To infinity!.. and... beyond... uh.....
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Going to US? Read for your own convenience, you might not know...

Los Angeles, United States

Ok. Planes, however large they look when you're standing next to them are actually pretty small. So when there is a group of less than *how to phrase this without sounding offensive*... intelligent, loud mouthed over bearing individuals who insist on shouting at each other from 6 inches apart for the duration of a polite conversation it's kinda hard to escape. Someone needs to invent a life jacket that you can remove from it's cover under your chair, inflate by pulling the red tab or using the mouth piece and all of a sudden you won't hear these annoying people. But really the flight, despite that it was 14ish hours, was fine. But... and there's always a but, here is the kicker, border control there is HARSH, if you EVER travel to the states, please follow:

Step 1)
ENSURE that you RUN as fast as you can to the front of the line, push people out of the way if necessary, particularly if they are infirmed or elderly, these people will only hold you back. Remember, in America only the strong survive anyways so you don't need to feel too bad for too long.

The reason for Step 1 is because the immigration "officers" are SO slow, the amount of crap they have to do is huge, so it follows that it takes a LONG time.

Step 2)
Despite being at the front of the line it'll still take FOREVER because unless you're a US citizen there will probably only be a couple of booths open. If this is the case fill in your GREEN and WHITE forms. Double Check them. QUADRUPLE TUPLE CHECK THEM. Do not get anything wrong, they will send you to the back of the line, they aren't joking!

Quick story:>

Now it might just be me that answers questions that are asked literally, but when the question reads: "Where will you spend your time in the US?" and the answer to that question is "At LAX because I'm in transit to Canada" it follows that you would write "LAX" in the answer box. NO NO NO NO NO. ARE YOU SO STUPID (or should I say STOOPID?) THAT YOU THINK THAT'S WHERE YOU'RE GOING the man asked me... I simply said "Oh, sorry, I'm jet lagged". Of course in my brain I'm thinking, well, I answered the STOOPID question, so aren't you the jerk bag? But I didn't want to be sent home, so I complied.

Step 3)
Don't bother looking for a sign. That tells you anything. There aren't any.

Step 4)
If you're not planning on staying there to see all the wonderful stuff that I'm sure is there behind a curtain of rude, arrogant and generally unhelpful airport people (I'm sure past the iron curtain of the airport there is plenty of nice things and people... well, it looked like that in Borat) then enjoy your stay :)

Oh and don't leave your laptop in it's case when you're going through the gates, they'll draw their guns and I don't mean draw them with Crayola crayons on scrap paper.

I never thought I'd star in a teen movie, or even be an Extra, but it seems that LAX is EXACTLY like the movies, and the general population of the airport was EXACTLY like the movies. "Pledgers" on their way to Spring break, "Soccer Moms", "Jocks", "Nerds", amazing! It was kinda cool in a really odd sorta way. Of course there were plenty of foreigners too, but in general it was everything that I thought was TV, and nothing that felt real.

Anyways... OFF TO CANADA!!! WOOHOO

permalink written by  haveyouseenmypassport on March 10, 2007 from Los Angeles, United States
from the travel blog: To infinity!.. and... beyond... uh.....
tagged Us, LAX, Border and Control
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Home away from Home

Vancouver, Canada

After my experience with the American border guard, and the subsequent flight to Vancouver I wasn't expecting much. Probably more to do with my attitude than to do with what I was arriving to... Amazing. That is the only word that I can use to describe the contrast between the Canadian and American border guards. Now I've heard that Canadians are nice people, and I suppose all the ones I've ever met have been nice, but really, it was amazing. They questioned me, at length, in a similar fashion to the Americans, with I suppose similar questions and yet they managed to not come across as... well... jerks. Lovely begging to my stay in this country! Easy to get my visa issued. Easy to get through the airport. Easy to get my bag. Pleasant taxi drivers.

So having been in town for all of about 40 minutes Sarah and I decided that we would definitely need a bottle of wine. I thought that I wasn't jet lagged. It turned out that I was wrong. Although, while we were making the trek between the bottle-o and our house we were given very stern looks by two local police officers who happened to drive past exactly as we stepped into the road to jay-walk... Ooops. Luckily I managed to avoid being deported on my first day.

Luckily we found some vikings. But that is another part of the story. Anyways, to give you an idea, here it is really interesting when you look for a job. The service and hospitality industries here are amazing in the standard that they require. Looking for work as a bartender was quite daunting as most bars require that you have EXCELLENT cocktail skills. As much as it hurts me to admit that I'm actually not that savvy when it comes to cocktails, I managed to get over it and got hired in a Malaysian restaurant as a bartender. Amusing first night. The place's website is here http://bananaleaf-vancouver.com/ . It was fun and the people there were really nice, but I was wanting a day job cause I don't like working opposite hours to Sarah... It sucked. But it was only a couple of days anyways!

Now I am a "filing clerk" translation: general office bitch. It's good though. I'm working in the south of the city, just near a place called Richmond actually, but it's a nice mix of people. I am possibly one of the younger people there.

But everyone seems really nice and while I'm doing my filing every now and then I get to go and make a coffee and generally chat to people. Like I said, they are all really nice, so it's going to be a good place to work. Sadly I don't think it's going to be a place to work like the Doot, but it's still going to be a bit of fun. I take two buses to work and I still get there in around 20 minutes and I get to wear my jeans to work so it's a pretty good little deal. Can't wait for a paycheck though! CRIKEY!

Sarah and I decided that it was time to do some walking around and seeing stuff today instead of just gathering dust on the sofa. By the way, our apartment is really sweet, but that's another story. So we left home around midday, which was just after we woke up and headed around to a place called Granville Island. This place is famous for it's local brewery (Surprise Surprise that we ended up there), it's not a big brewery and I am led to believe that they only service Vancouver, but I'm not sure. Either way, we are planning a return visit for next weekend. I suspect we will be tasting some beer then as well.... But who can tell these days?

Well, I guess this is getting a bit long, especially for those of you that are sneaking internet time at work and stealing from the company... But briefly, this place is amazing. When we walk out the front door (as long as it's clear) we can see snow capped mountains, and the ski runs on them. The people here so far (touch wood) have been absolutely lovely. Even the beggars here seem to be nice. Not that I have spent

permalink written by  haveyouseenmypassport on March 18, 2007 from Vancouver, Canada
from the travel blog: To infinity!.. and... beyond... uh.....
tagged Vancouver
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Pole dancing AND killer penguins. Wait I mean seagulls.

Vancouver, Canada

So for a comparitively quiet week it seems some reasonably interesting things have happened. Now, as I am a filing "clerk" my days are boringly tame. I haven't been issued with a desk, or stationary yet. I'm a bit sad about that, but I guess you can't really put a desk between the two moving shelves of the file room, so that's alright.

ANYWAYS! Sarah and I decided that we should do something for the end of the week. We got a couple of people over for a few "quiet" drinks. By a few drinks, I'm pretty sure I'm refering the bottle of bacardi, 6 stubbies of beer, one bottle of wine that was consumed between us. Sarah is making drink lots Mum. It wasn't my idea I swear. I think the neighbours still like us though as we weren't having loads of people come and go all night. Unlike the people across the hall. I'm starting to wonder if it's a brothel or a drug den. Not sure yet. But will keep everyone updated on this page.

Saturday day morning for Sarah saw a hangover. As I am way more better at drinking and I drink a lot less than her too, I had no hangover. We decided that the best thing to do would be to go to North Vancouver. Not that we knew exactly what was there. But we got to go on a "Sea Bus". Not a bus at all really, more of a ferry. But these Canadians are strange sometimes. Sarah, in her hung over state thought that it was appropirate to be pole dancing in a childrens playground! Photo evidence is attached.

Now, there didn't really seem like a whole lot to do on the North shore, but we had a wander around a market and a bit of pizza. It was while enjoying my lunch that I was ATTACKED by a seagull. It swooped down, removed the slice of pizza that was in my hand (moving towards my mouth) and proceeded to crash into the ground where the clever seagull was set upon by his so called mates and the pizza slice was devoured in about 5 seconds. At first I was mad. but then I was kinda impressed by the ploy. That brave criminal penguin has his mugshot posted here.

Otherwise we had a very pleasant afternoon, generally wandering around and taking pictures of downtown from the North Van "Sea Bus" stop. Nice.

Sunday was rather quiet as once again we had a few "quiet" drinks with friends on Saturday night. But Sarah decided it was time she learn how to throw a firsbee. A quiet afternoon in the park with the frisbee was just what the doctor ordered after he ordered a two bottle of Bacardi weekend.



permalink written by  haveyouseenmypassport on March 25, 2007 from Vancouver, Canada
from the travel blog: To infinity!.. and... beyond... uh.....
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Mighty Ducks 4: Learning to skate!

Vancouver, Canada


Limo, with Aussie Flag number plates!!!!
While unrelated to the tittle of this blog entry, I think that this is probably the most interesting sight that we have seen this week. Sarah and I decided that it was time to indulge in some of the local recreational activities here in Vancouver. While we were hoping to pop up to the mountains for a spot of skiing, we thought that something perhaps a little more local was the order of the day. So we looked up our local ice rink, which happens to only be a 10 minute walk away! Brilliant! This car is actually a limo and was parked in one of the side streets on the way to the ice rink! We couldn't smell any BBQs going on, or hear anyone shouting about kangeroos, but none the less we were under the sneaking suspicion that there were some Aussies about. If we believed the rhetoric in this: http://blogs.theage.com.au/travel/archives/2007/03/new_yanks_and_j.html blog then we would have run as far as we could. But anyways, on to the ice rink!


Mighty ducks
If you've ever been to roller city in Eltham then you'll be pretty well versed in the ways of the skate. The general demeanour of skaters was very similar to that or the roller skate cousins of these ice skaters. In fact, I could have been at Eltham roller city if it wasn't freezing and there wasn't ice instead of concrete. We expected that we wouldn't exactly be fantastic at this new sport, but we were pretty sure in ourselves that we wouldn't receive compound fractures to our "tail bones". Okay, ice skating is HARD. Much harder than roller blading/skating. Our first tentative swooshes on the ice were hilarious for the locals I'm sure. But we continued and ended up going pretty good. We stopped short of triple spins and although I was keen to throw Sarah into the air, she was reluctant... I wasn't mad at the little kids that were better at skating than me. I'm just jealous.

Sadly it hasn't really been a terribly interesting week otherwise. Interestingly, perhaps on a social observation side is the labourforce here that would generally be made up of teenagers in Melbourne is made up of middle aged people here. At every Safeway supermarket I've been to here, the checkout chicks are generally between the age of 30 - 40. And that's interesting considering that I think it is likely that Safeway pay around minimum wage. Minimum wage here is $8.00 CAD per hour. So think yourself lucky at home when your're getting around 13 or 14 dollars as a minimum at home in Australia. Especially considering that the cost of living here is very similar to at home in Melbourne. Just a thought.

Otherwise, I hope everyone is well and having a good time! More pictures to come!

Cheers

Tom



permalink written by  haveyouseenmypassport on April 1, 2007 from Vancouver, Canada
from the travel blog: To infinity!.. and... beyond... uh.....
tagged Skating
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Why doesn't this forest smell?

Vancouver, Canada

Easter weekend! For us that means four whole days off! For me anyways. Sadly for Sarah she only gets three days off. But after a somewhat same and dullish week I was absolutely totally ready for a four days of relaxation and general pottering!

Amber and Simon gave us a call Friday morning while we were recovering from hangovers and suggested that a trip to the wilderness might be the order of the day. We agreed and half an hour later we were on our way to the Lighthouse National Park. I've been pretty subdued in my attempts to get "out-doorsy" here, so when I came to the national park I was a little concerned that we were going to have to hike. While we weren't hiking as such, someone had the bright idea to go rock hopping!

Which was totally fun, if not a little bit scary. Sheer ledges and jagged rocks below are a good motivator to not fall off the rock you're currently hopping on. This lighthouse turned out to be a bit of a let down as it was on private property, but it is definitely a tourist attraction as we had to cue up to get photos of it. Not in an organised cue or anything, just polite tourists waiting their turn to have the photo. Ours turned out pretty well!
As entertaining as the Llighthouse was, we weren't even a third of the way through our day. Piling back into the jeep in the carpark we set out for Lynn Canyon national park. There is a suspension bridge there that is free to go across. Basically you're standing above a canyon (funnily enough Lynn Canyon) and below there are rapids and waterfalls and generally winderness like events.
Apparently some stupidly large number of people have been killed shile trying to jump off the waterfalls or swim down the rapids. That's sad. Many of them were in the 80's, or so I gather from the memorial stones.
Getting to the bottom of the canyon saw a break for lunch. Now I'm not sure why, but it seems that Canadians like to pop to the local national park to smoke a spliff. Why? I don't know wither. Everywhere we walked there was the extremely pungent smell of skunk being burned. Bizarre. But what's more bizzare is that the forest here has no smell. I didn't notice it when we were by the sea, but in the middle of the forest there was absolutely no smell. In the rare moments when the ganja wasn't in the air there was none of the wilderness smell that I thought there would be. But anyways.

So we had our lunch, did some more walking and had Amber, Simon and Mark over for a roast and a watch of the film Kenny. Kenny comes highly recommended to anyone who has not yet seen it. 2 bottles of wine, 1 bottle of Bacardi and a few beers later, we were all sufficients smashed to turn in for the night.

As if we didn't have enough excercise on the Friday, we decided to go roller blading around Stanley park with Sarah's friend Erika on Saturday. Now I'm a bit sad cause I finally came across some locals that I didn't like. Strangely they were both from the bike/skate hire places on Denman street in downtown Vancouver. Perhaps a life of hiring things to people who are clearly going to enjoy their day much more that you is enough to make anyone turn into a nasty pastie... Not sure. But these people are RUDE. Don't bother asking for your student discount either. The sign means that you just go in there expecting to get a discount. Skating was way fun despite the unpleasant people who hire out the skates.

I was trying not to get too aggressive about it, but Sarah kept egging me on and saying that she was a better skater than me. This could have resulted in disaster if I hadn't stopped just before the collision!

Overall a pretty active weekend. I am now exhausted.

And I have another day off.

I hope you're all well!

Cheers!



permalink written by  haveyouseenmypassport on April 8, 2007 from Vancouver, Canada
from the travel blog: To infinity!.. and... beyond... uh.....
tagged Vancouver and LynnCanyon
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Gathering dust and growing mushrooms

Vancouver, Canada

Well geepers.

A quiet week was ordered and subsequently delivered to us this week. While I was extremely excited to get back to work in the filing room, I was not ready for the pile after pile of work that had accumulated in my "in" trays. Wow, I was thinking tha tnothing would have happened over the long weekend at the office, sadly I was wrong.

But really, the only purpose of this blog update is to maintain my weekly updates.

No face merkins, hilarity, hiking or lunches being eaten by seagulls this week... I am getting pretty good at Texas Hold 'Em on the PSP though.

permalink written by  haveyouseenmypassport on April 15, 2007 from Vancouver, Canada
from the travel blog: To infinity!.. and... beyond... uh.....
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Survived the fire!

Vancouver, Canada


Sarah tried to kill me with fire. She killed the book good too
At first I thought we were going to have another fairly normal, not very interesting week. Little did I know that on Thursday, Sarah was going to try to kill us by burning the house down! A tip for people with naked flames in the house, don't put your library books on top of them ok. It's dangerous kiddies. Charley says "Don't play with matches". Please go to this url: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/films/1964to1979/filmpage_matches.htm for more information about what Charley says. It all turned out ok, seeing as I saved the day and removed the slain library book from the flames and doused it with water. I'm not sure what we're going to tell the library yet. Not to worry.

Now, for the rest of the adventure of Thursday! We popped to our local to watch the Vancouver Canucks play the Dallas Kings in the play-offs for the hockey here.


Bus riding! WOWOOO
Sarah inisisted on taking the bus and as it is still somewhat cold here at night, I agreed this was the best option. Of course what bus trip would be complete without a picture to document the event? That's right, no bus trip! Room 18 is this little restaurant bar near us that has 3 screens (about 11 shy of the doot, yeah) but it was a nice place to be watching the game. Packed out as well. They were about to have a lawsuit on their hands though, as we were sitting on the bench seat across the wall it broke. We were accused of being responsible by these locals:

Crazy Canadians who accused us of breaking bench chair
however they were very polite and were actually really good fun. Sadly I am not sure what their names were/are and I won't remember even if they had told me as I had been forced into drinking a large number of beers. These chaps had however made the adventure to Australia, one of them to Melbourne and the other one to Perth. They concurred that Canada and Australia have many things in common and are both very nice places. We were left pondering that thought as the Vancouver Canucks lost by a goal in overtime. This "ice" hockey is a rather exciting game actually, they belt the crap out of each other and hit the opposition with their sticks and everything. Kinda like Ultimate Fighting, but way better cause they have blades strapped to their feet. Friday morning saw regrets of drinking so much the night before as 7 hours in a file room with a pounding headache is rubbish no matter how you look at it.

Friday night did however hold some surprises. Sarah informed me that we were invited to a party with some locals. Needless to say, I was reluctant as I was still recovering from Thursday night, but I agreed... We played the following board games:
1) Poker
2) Cranium
3) How to host a murder
Now you'd think that with a list of activities like that it was going to be a quiet night in at the mortuary. Not the case. I have never heard more XXX rated conversations in my life. I wasn't even taking part! Sarah was sitting there blushing while the girl next to her told everyone how she pashed her best friend (also female) the week prior and that if we would like to see photos they were on her boyfriend's laptop. These Canadians eh. Crazy. So after a few more cans of "Pilsner" which is apparently the worst beer in Canada we popped home and crashed out.

Seems like it's crazy here alright!

Saturday I got cosy with the sofa.

Sunday we went and did walking trails in the forest around the University of British Columbia, which was pretty good.

On for another week of filing!

permalink written by  haveyouseenmypassport on April 21, 2007 from Vancouver, Canada
from the travel blog: To infinity!.. and... beyond... uh.....
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Go Canucks!

Vancouver, Canada

I'm sorry that I don't like sport. I'm not sorry that I've become fascinated with this game of ice-hockey. Sarah keeps asking what I've done with her real boyfriend. I keep assuring her that indeed I am him and she shouldn't be concerend as I have not been body snatched by aliens with superior techonology and intelligence. I'm starting to wonder if she watches Star Trek Voyager too much. Waking up with a sweat and speaking "Klingon" should have been a good indicator that Sarah has had enough Star Trek in her life time, but it's not for me to impose rules on the TV now is it? Luckily we have two teles so we can watch the hockey and Star Trek both at the same time. The good news is that the Vancouver Canucks won game two against the Anaheim Ducks in a two overtime period thriller. But enough about hockey.

There have been some interesting events this week. Tuesday-ish apparently the storage locker area was broken into here in the apartment block. I was going down to inspect the damage when I met one of the other tennants. Now, apparently the block next door houses a crack dealer who "buys" stolen goods off local hobos using rocks of crack, which is why we have a hobo party in the car park of our building all weekend. I'm pretty annoyed about hearing this cause the hobos are really annoying when they are just sitting there and stinking up the area. Very sad and all that, but annoying, cause I don't want to live near a crack head stolen goods dealer. Very irritating. Don't worry John, the hobos don't attack anyone, they just sit there and be annoying. As we don't have anything in our storage locker, we were lucky and nothing was stolen.

Thursday night my steak craving finally got the better of me. There just wasn't anything that I could do anymore, so we popped to a pub that has a $10 steak night. Had a bottle of BC's finest Cab-Merlot. Was very nice pub actually, the pub was pretty nice, large main area with a mezzanine that we sat at one of the tables on. So that was pretty nice. The steak was just fantastic. Not often is a steak cooked exactly how I ask for it, but the chef in this place definitely had his head screwed on. More to the point, it's not often that a $10 steak is really something to write home about, unless you're at the Doot. So we were pleasantly surprised with how nice the meal was. Especially for a tenna! Brilliant.

This entire six or eight weeks I was planning on chopping off my hair when the weather got a bit nicer, so I wouldn't have a cold melon. Trying to plug the charger that I brought with me for the clippers I found that it wouldn't fit!? Shocking I know! This has lead to my severe cultivation of a mullet.


Serious Mullet Action
I'm not sure how it's going. I have probably got more work to do in terms of shortening the top and lengthening the back, but I'm pretty pleased so far. Sarah keeps trying to cut off the whispy rat tail bit at the back, but I'm resisting pretty hard. If I can find a new charger for the clippers then I'm going to give it the chop as soon as possible. Failing that I'm concerned that I'm going to have to leave the old Whalies behind. I know, I know, that's pretty drastic, but it's nearly a kilo that I could lose in terms of backpack weight if I donate them to the salvos. We'll see.

This weekend is pretty much a sitting about and chilling. We did pop to IKEA Richmond (Oh my god, I was scared) for a fix of shopping that Sarah required. What is it with chicks and needing to go and luck at stuff that they're not going to buy anyways? I managed to amble around the entire IKEA at a pace that was conducive to my love looking at as much Scandinavian-Home-Furishing-Ware/s as she could handle. We escaped without buying anything, not even a shoe rack. A shoe rack is probably the thing we need most right now, I mean I have absolutely no where to put all my shoes. Oh well. We also popped 'round to a friend's house for a spot of surfing (couch type) and a couple of cans while eating Russian and other Eastern block region type foods, which were very nice. We called it an early night though. Sunday... Well, it's now Sunday and I'm pretty relaxed. In fact I'm so relaxed that I'm going to go and cook up some dinner and watch the tele some more. Brilliant!

Take it easy!



permalink written by  haveyouseenmypassport on April 29, 2007 from Vancouver, Canada
from the travel blog: To infinity!.. and... beyond... uh.....
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My Mum says I look like a Mormon

Vancouver, Canada


Kits Beach Monday afternoon
You know, I was pretty upset when I found out that my clipper charger is at home. But I didn't think it would mean that I would be copping quite so much grief from this side of the world! This weekend Sarah and I went to another city here in BC called Burnaby. It's more of suburb than a city if you ask me, it barely took any time to get there on the train. Kinda like going from Ivanhoe to Greensborough. Anyways, there is this "Mall" there called Metropolis, and it's at the station called Metrotown. I kinda felt like I was in a Robocop film and the mega corp OCP were just around the corner. So this mall was pretty mammoth, but we couldn't really find anything that we should buy. Sarah did a pretty good job of avoiding killing me... Well, avoiding trying to kill me anyways. Alas, the only this that we were looking for (a webcam for using on skype) was no where to be found. Still, we were pretty tired and we didn't even get to have any beers. We headed back to town emptyhanded, but definitely enriched for the trip to the burbs.


The sun through polarised sunnies and clouds
In town we managed to find what we were looking for in a store called London Drugs. Now I find it awefully strange that the call pharmacies "drug stores" and that they don't just sell pharmaceutical goods. No, no they sell everything you can think of, including cds, dvds, computers etc etc. Sarah was standing in front of a 20" iMac and she was nearly in tears cause it was so beautiful. The sales guy was slightly bemused by her watery eyes and for a minute there I truly believd that we were going to see some water works. It was fine. We were further tempted to buy extra stuff though. At the checkout the She-Ra movie was on display next to the check out bloke. The guy's sales pitch was absolutely unreal: "Oh yeah! Man I love She-Ra too! So you wanna buy this or..?". We were nearly sold, the only thing that stopped us was that we're not confident that we'll hang on to it while we're gallavanting around.

Friday night we had poutine (POO-TEEN) at a local joint called Hell's Kitchen. I was pretty happy with the poutine, but sadly people here don't seem to understand that 330mls of beers IS NOT a pint. They do have some real problems in the service industry here. For a start, they don't know what measurements constitute a pint (in any bar I have been in at all!) and the workers only get a base wage of $8.00 per hour, so they are constantly trying to crawl up your arse to see if you want anything else. The other side of that is that tipping etiquette is to tip between 12 and 20% of the price. So the more they get you to buy the higher the tip is likely to be. It's really annoying when you're trying to have a conversation and someone keeps hassling you, even when you haven't nearly finished your drink. Regardless of all that whinging, we had a really nice time!


Near the yacht club in Kits
Thursday we'd been BBQing with Amber and Simon. True to form Sarah convinced me to drink too many beers, so I was a little bit drunk. Not so drunk that I was sick or anything, but I did have a pounding headache on Friday morning. It wouldn't have been that bad except that I had to go and file stuff. I have finally finished consolidating the file room. For some reason this means that I am now going to be doing morning reception. I'm not totally adverse to the idea of doing reception or anything... the executive P.A.'s telling me that I would need to wear a skirt and heels on Monday morning. I'm starting to wonder what kind of work place this is...

Only four weeks left in Vancouver! Plenty of opportunities for Sarah to try and kill us left! I'll keep you updated!

permalink written by  haveyouseenmypassport on May 6, 2007 from Vancouver, Canada
from the travel blog: To infinity!.. and... beyond... uh.....
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