The last 3 months of Vancouver
So as could probably have been easily predicted, I've neglected the blog for a large amount of time.. But anyway here's an update. Its amazing how little i can remember of all the details since the last update. When you kind of live your life day to day and dont really plan too much it ends up being a bit of a blur... I had some amazing adventures in Vancouver, and lots of really good stories to tell. But beyond that there is a much richer enjoyment that simply cannot be described. It's the experience of living out of your home town, of forming tight knitted almost family like loving bonds with other people who are going through their own adventure, intertwined with yours, it's sharing these little experiences in the moment that makes living abroad what it is. The details may be forgotten but it's the feelings associated with them are unforgetable and will be cherished forever.
So a few more trips hiking, mountain biking, more camping, tennis, beach and fun saw the days of summer begin to get shorter and the heat of the sun lose it's intensity in favor of crisper, cooler temperatures that is forever associated with the start of autumm, or fall as they cal it in North America. The colours the the Maple and other trees display during this magical time is nothing short of amazing. The sludge and slippery leaves that coat the pavement everywhere you go gets slightly annoying but sheer beauty outshines any of that - at least for me :) My sister Alana also returned from her 5 month long adventure around Europe to join us in Van for another month before ultimately ending up back in Melbourne. My birthday was a pretty fun event.. A complete waster evening I dont remember a lot, too many bday tequila shots. however i hear my drunkeness was more entertaining than it was tragic. One can only hope. After drinking at a bar around the corner from our place we ended the evening on the beach with a big crew. Great night. Not so great following day.
Crew at the peak of a hike somewhere near Squamish
Ang, Sacha, Kathy & Lani
End of Summer Sunset Looking over Jericho
Cloud covers Grouse Mountain on a sunny Fall day at Kits.
Stanley Park on the left and English Bay downtown's West End on the right
A few jobs here and there with the temp agency helped to maintain the funding, while some seriously boring jobs took up a little extra of my time. EA finished up, the novelty had worn off, and the reality of the $11/hr i was getting paid to bust my ass lifting heavy crap became increasingly unattractive, so i accepted offers for some different work. I worked for BHP Billiton in their surprisingly tiny office in downtown vancouver. What a joke that was. I filled in for a guy who was taking a week holiday. The main bulk of tasks assigned was to keep the fridge stocked with cool drinks and ensure the fruit platter is full. Easy work but very boring. Another job consisted of working for a small business, doing a little data entry. The person i worked for printed off a textfile of data to enter into her outlook address book, to which i carefully tried to explain that if the data is in a text file i doesnt need to be typed, that you can import the data. Impatiently flustered and confused at this suggestion she angrily told me to please just type it in 'like everyone else does it'. So agreeing, i found the file on the computer, imported the data in 5 minutes and browsed the web for a week. Easy money, but very boring.
I was originally due to leave Vancouver on October 8th, however my gut feelings didnt really agree with that. The date was purely arbitrarily picked when i orinally booked my round-the-world ticket but for some reason i didnt really consider the fact that i could just change that (for free!) until about 2 weeks before. Good friends Ben and Adrien were looking for an appartment to move into on the first of October. When they found a place that had an extra bedroom they'd need to fill came up, it seemed absolutely perfect that i should take the room for the month of October. This also meant that I would be staying around for Thanksgiving AND Halloween. So I opted to stay, and not work, and enjoy my last month of Vancouver having fun and playing music.
The House
The house was a rundown old place built in the 30s. I loved it. I loved it so much. It had been previously occupied by a producer and the basement had been converted into a recording studio complete with a sound deadened room. I turned the studio into my bedroom and borrowing some equipment from the lovely Sacha and some other friends, set up the sound room for recording! A few jam sessions were had and recorded as well as recording Sacha do a few tracks and some covers on my own it was a great learning experience for a few weeks and something i'd love to have access to again sometime. Sacha was also looking for a new place to live, and as she has aspirations to record a solo album while she's there, it was an obvious decision for her to take over my room when I left, that she did with the lovely Angela joining her, and they may just see out the lease with the other boys. Furnishing the empty house was easier than expected.. Cragislist has a section called free stuff where people just list stuff they dont want anymore to be taken away and with the help of a hired van we pretty much furnished the entire house for free. 3 couches, a coffee table, 2 tvs, lamps, chairs, an audio video reciever and more.. amazing!
As the house was run down and quite dingy, it seemed a natural step to combine our housewarming with a halloween party, and since i was leaving on the 2nd of Nov, it was also my farewell. What a party. We just let word of mouth and facebook spread the message and come the evening, our gloriously decorated house adorned with cobwebs (fake and real), carved pumpkins and fairy lights we hosted a massive influx of party-goers, many of whom we didnt know. Pretty much every party i've been to in Vancouver has either had the music shut by the cops or by the hosts in fear of the cops by 11pm.. however as fate would have it, no one seemed to mind that we had slamming music pumped virtually until dawn. As with many things in my van experience, it was just meant to be.
Goodbye
I had a very hard time saying goodbye to Vancouver. I made some very very good friends there, and connected with many people on all kinds of levels. I dont know what the future holds, but i know with 100% certainty that the only reason i left when i did is because the round-the-world tickets i have expire in February and the rough plan of travel through UK, Korea, India, and Sth East Asia is too good an opporunity not to jump on right now. However, my family in Vancouver will be very very much missed. Money and debt are the only thing that make me assume i can't get back there, but my working visa is valid until Feb 2011 so who knows..
On Tuesday the 2nd Nov, Sacha and Amin accompanied me to the airport and on I took off to the UK.
So as could probably have been easily predicted, I've neglected the blog for a large amount of time.. But anyway here's an update. Its amazing how little i can remember of all the details since the last update. When you kind of live your life day to day and dont really plan too much it ends up being a bit of a blur... I had some amazing adventures in Vancouver, and lots of really good stories to tell. But beyond that there is a much richer enjoyment that simply cannot be described. It's the experience of living out of your home town, of forming tight knitted almost family like loving bonds with other people who are going through their own adventure, intertwined with yours, it's sharing these little experiences in the moment that makes living abroad what it is. The details may be forgotten but it's the feelings associated with them are unforgetable and will be cherished forever.
So a few more trips hiking, mountain biking, more camping, tennis, beach and fun saw the days of summer begin to get shorter and the heat of the sun lose it's intensity in favor of crisper, cooler temperatures that is forever associated with the start of autumm, or fall as they cal it in North America. The colours the the Maple and other trees display during this magical time is nothing short of amazing. The sludge and slippery leaves that coat the pavement everywhere you go gets slightly annoying but sheer beauty outshines any of that - at least for me :) My sister Alana also returned from her 5 month long adventure around Europe to join us in Van for another month before ultimately ending up back in Melbourne. My birthday was a pretty fun event.. A complete waster evening I dont remember a lot, too many bday tequila shots. however i hear my drunkeness was more entertaining than it was tragic. One can only hope. After drinking at a bar around the corner from our place we ended the evening on the beach with a big crew. Great night. Not so great following day.
Crew at the peak of a hike somewhere near Squamish
Ang, Sacha, Kathy & Lani
End of Summer Sunset Looking over Jericho
Cloud covers Grouse Mountain on a sunny Fall day at Kits.
Stanley Park on the left and English Bay downtown's West End on the right
A few jobs here and there with the temp agency helped to maintain the funding, while some seriously boring jobs took up a little extra of my time. EA finished up, the novelty had worn off, and the reality of the $11/hr i was getting paid to bust my ass lifting heavy crap became increasingly unattractive, so i accepted offers for some different work. I worked for BHP Billiton in their surprisingly tiny office in downtown vancouver. What a joke that was. I filled in for a guy who was taking a week holiday. The main bulk of tasks assigned was to keep the fridge stocked with cool drinks and ensure the fruit platter is full. Easy work but very boring. Another job consisted of working for a small business, doing a little data entry. The person i worked for printed off a textfile of data to enter into her outlook address book, to which i carefully tried to explain that if the data is in a text file i doesnt need to be typed, that you can import the data. Impatiently flustered and confused at this suggestion she angrily told me to please just type it in 'like everyone else does it'. So agreeing, i found the file on the computer, imported the data in 5 minutes and browsed the web for a week. Easy money, but very boring.
I was originally due to leave Vancouver on October 8th, however my gut feelings didnt really agree with that. The date was purely arbitrarily picked when i orinally booked my round-the-world ticket but for some reason i didnt really consider the fact that i could just change that (for free!) until about 2 weeks before. Good friends Ben and Adrien were looking for an appartment to move into on the first of October. When they found a place that had an extra bedroom they'd need to fill came up, it seemed absolutely perfect that i should take the room for the month of October. This also meant that I would be staying around for Thanksgiving AND Halloween. So I opted to stay, and not work, and enjoy my last month of Vancouver having fun and playing music.
The House
The house was a rundown old place built in the 30s. I loved it. I loved it so much. It had been previously occupied by a producer and the basement had been converted into a recording studio complete with a sound deadened room. I turned the studio into my bedroom and borrowing some equipment from the lovely Sacha and some other friends, set up the sound room for recording! A few jam sessions were had and recorded as well as recording Sacha do a few tracks and some covers on my own it was a great learning experience for a few weeks and something i'd love to have access to again sometime. Sacha was also looking for a new place to live, and as she has aspirations to record a solo album while she's there, it was an obvious decision for her to take over my room when I left, that she did with the lovely Angela joining her, and they may just see out the lease with the other boys. Furnishing the empty house was easier than expected.. Cragislist has a section called free stuff where people just list stuff they dont want anymore to be taken away and with the help of a hired van we pretty much furnished the entire house for free. 3 couches, a coffee table, 2 tvs, lamps, chairs, an audio video reciever and more.. amazing!
As the house was run down and quite dingy, it seemed a natural step to combine our housewarming with a halloween party, and since i was leaving on the 2nd of Nov, it was also my farewell. What a party. We just let word of mouth and facebook spread the message and come the evening, our gloriously decorated house adorned with cobwebs (fake and real), carved pumpkins and fairy lights we hosted a massive influx of party-goers, many of whom we didnt know. Pretty much every party i've been to in Vancouver has either had the music shut by the cops or by the hosts in fear of the cops by 11pm.. however as fate would have it, no one seemed to mind that we had slamming music pumped virtually until dawn. As with many things in my van experience, it was just meant to be.
Goodbye
I had a very hard time saying goodbye to Vancouver. I made some very very good friends there, and connected with many people on all kinds of levels. I dont know what the future holds, but i know with 100% certainty that the only reason i left when i did is because the round-the-world tickets i have expire in February and the rough plan of travel through UK, Korea, India, and Sth East Asia is too good an opporunity not to jump on right now. However, my family in Vancouver will be very very much missed. Money and debt are the only thing that make me assume i can't get back there, but my working visa is valid until Feb 2011 so who knows..
On Tuesday the 2nd Nov, Sacha and Amin accompanied me to the airport and on I took off to the UK.
