march 2005
Top of the city
Just a quickie. Net access is a bit limited at the moment. I’m in the hotel’s business centre, at a rare moment when hordes of people aren’t fighting over the two Ethernet connections. Get a wireless router, management!
So, we’re in a pretty darn nice suite on the 21st floor (well, the 20th really, as there is no 13th - how quaint). It has hardwood floors, a King-size bed, a full kitchen (with stove, pans, dishwasher, and so on), a washer/dryer, and fantastic views of English Bay, the West End, and the mountains beyond North Vancouver.
Yesterday was beautifully sunny, so we went up to Whistler, supposedly one of the best ski resorts in North America, for the day (photos to come). Today it’s rainy and cold, though, so we’re going shopping and just generally hanging out.
Life is so tough.
31 march 2005 ~ 12:13 
A vacation from my vacation
So, Robbie gets into town today from San Diego. I’m off to the airport in a minute to meet him, then we’ll be checking into a hotel for ten days. We’ll travel around a bit, but will most likely just hang out most of the time.
The hotel has dialup, so we’ll see how that works. If all else fails, we can get online at a coffee shop, or even come back to my apartment and hook up to the Ethernet there. In the meantime, though, I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to post here, or reply to email. Maybe not much at all, until April 6th.
Later!
27 march 2005 ~ 10:13
Night shoot
Taking photos at night with a flash yields interesting results. The camera doesn’t know what to focus on until the flash goes off, so sometimes things are in focus, sometimes not.
25 march 2005 ~ 15:41
Things to see and do
Time to catch up on some links I’ve been enjoying lately.
- When I was reading about Yahoo! buying Flickr recently, I found out that Flickr’s parent company Ludicorp is based right here in Vancouver. As is Dave Shea, owner of mezzoblue and curator of the famous CSS Zen Garden. Well I never!
- Here’s a way to do rounded corners without images, using CSS and JavaScript. Nice.
- Metroblogging Atlanta lets me know what’s going on in the city I lived in for seven years. I love the web.
- Beards: They Grow On You! Yes, they do.
- Kate Bush has a new album out later this year, her first since 1993. I am so excited about this. She is one of my all-time greatest musical heroes. Heroines. Whatever.
- That dude from the BBC’s Cash in the Attic has a website and a blog. Quite interesting, especially when he writes about his experiences with drugs and sex. No kidding.
- I’d kinda like to get a caricature made of me by the guys at Cute Little Blokes. Fifty bucks, though. Still thinking about that one.
- The Firefox extension Down Them All is fantastic for quickly downloading large numbers of items linked from a web page. I’ve been using it, and it saves me so much time.
That’s your lot!
24 march 2005 ~ 13:51
I’ll just die if I don’t get this recipe
Weird things have been happening to me since I’ve been in Canada (cue Twilight Zone music):
- When I arrived at Vancouver Airport, I turned on my cellphone to check the time, and immediately received a text message saying “Welcome to Canada!” That sort of freaked me out.
- When I first fired up my laptop and went online here, my browser’s home page was suddenly Google Canada instead of the regular Google.com that I originally set it to. I’m sure this is just some simple server-side IP-based redirect, but still... creepy. I can’t go to Google.com at all any more - it automatically redirects.
- Even weirder, Google sometimes displays entirely in French. It’s pretty random.
- I bought a big carton of milk my first day here, and two weeks later it was still completely fresh, without a hint of sourness. What on earth do they put in their dairy products here?
- It still freaks me out that one can go to what is absolutely a foreign country, in the same way that France, Kenya, and Japan are foreign countries, but everyone speaks English. I still find that weird, even after twelve years living in the US, and continue to do so here in Canada, when I think about it. I try not to.
On the other hand, it could just be me that’s weird.
23 march 2005 ~ 12:41
Alleys
Like San Diego, Vancouver is a city of alleys. All the nasty things that would spoil our residential streets - trash cans, dumpsters, concrete entrances to underground parking garages - are hidden away in the alleys that run parallel to those streets. It’s a clever system. One knows that all that ugliness is there, but one doesn’t have to look at it every day.
The alley behind my apartment building is interesting in that it is actually wider than the street in front of the building. Really, it’s huge. Homeless people live there, and I sometimes hear them rooting through the dumpsters for recyclables in the early hours of the morning.
The alleys in downtown Vancouver are particularly striking. Unlike San Diego’s barren, dusty alleys that look like country dirt roads, those here are like something out of a futuristic movie: all concrete and metal, flanked by industrial buildings, and roofed with struts and wire-slung poles.
Yes, that’s someone peeing there. Glance down any alley downtown, and you’ll usually see swarms of people just hanging out, rifling through bins, or relieving themselves against the wall. These grim lanes are home for some.
The alleys themselves have a certain alluring beauty in their griminess and squalour. Like what goes unspoken in a novel - what we must read between the lines - these back streets often say more about a city than the gleaming boulevards that most of us never step away from. They show us what society rejects and considers unworthy, what it wants hidden away from sight. And they’re right there for you to explore, any time you want.
22 march 2005 ~ 12:14
On the town
Last night I went out with my friend Clark, who has been my sort of tour guide for the last couple of weeks. We headed out to Numbers (every town has a bar called Numbers - I never did make it to the one in San Diego, alas), which was not terrifically exciting, then to the Pumpjack, which is where everyone always seems to end up. Then Clark’s friend Brian arrived from Seattle; funnily enough, I had read his blog before. ’Tis a small world indeed. Anyway, he seems like a really nice guy. I’ll probably run into him again before the weekend is over.
I tell you, though, alcohol sure is expensive here. You know you’re in trouble when the cheapest thing in the bar is crappy lager on “special” at $5 for a 12-ounce bottle. I’m used to paying about $2 in the US for the same thing. Still, I suppose it’s not really a problem, as I’ve been drinking noticeably less here. Can’t complain, really. Although I just did.
I feel like I’ve been here much longer than two weeks. I already run into acquaintances wherever I go: in the street, at the grocery store, at the coffee shop. That’s a nice feeling. It turns an unknown foreign city into a place that feels a lot more like home.
I slept in until 1:30 this afternoon. I couldn’t believe it when I hauled myself out of bed and looked at the clock. Obviously, I’m still catching up on sleep. One of the ways I’m being good to myself during my months in Canada is to sleep as much as I want, and not feel I have to get up at any particular time because I “should.” I’ve been running a noticeable sleep deficit for the last few years, pretty much always tired, and it will be great to redress the balance finally.
It’s rainy and dreary today. I’m not sure what to do, other than go out and grab something to eat later. I don’t really feel like going to a bar, because I did last night, and I’ll be going to the beer bust at the Pumpjack tomorrow afternoon. Three days in a row would be overkill. Anyway, we shall see. Maybe I’ll just stay in and geek out.
19 march 2005 ~ 16:56
Hair today, gone tomorrow
18 march 2005 ~ 11:24
Yes, you read that right
17 march 2005 ~ 17:38
Coffee time
I haven’t been posting as much as I’d like to, because the internet connection at the place I’m renting has become decidely flaky. It goes down without warning, and stays down for hours at a time. It’s starting to get absolutely ridiculous. I’ll have to see what I can do about that. In the meantime, I’m at a local coffee shop that has free wireless internet access, so all is not lost.
Some observations about Vancouver and Canada:
- Canadians are much more softly spoken than Americans. You don’t get people standing right next to each other shouting at the top of their lungs for no reason, as you do in the States. That’s quite a pleasant difference.
- I also realised yesterday that one never hears Valley Girl speak here. I haven’t heard a single sentence of the “Ohmygod, I was like so totally stoked, and she was all ‘Whatever!’, and I was like ‘No you didn’t!’, and Melissa is like such a total bitch!” type since I’ve been here. Again, refreshing.
- There are loads of homeless people in Vancouver. I mean a lot. Apparently they come here because it’s the only major city in Canada that isn’t under several feet of snow for most of the winter.
- People here complain about the cost of living, but coming from California, I find it really cheap here. You can get a huge, very good lunch for $5 (Canadian) here, which is absurd. Groceries are pretty cheap too.
- Everyone seems to have a dog in Vancouver. It makes me want one, but obviously it wouldn’t be practical right now. Maybe I should find one to walk...
- You see the Canadian flag everywhere, especially on clothing. The people are very proud of their country, and rightly so. You also hear a lot of negative comments about the US, although people travel down there all the time and seem to like Americans as people.
- Canadians remind me very much of British people, with regard to their humility, excessive politeness, and self-deprecating sense of humour.
- I haven’t heard people say “eh” that much, but it still makes me laugh when they say “aboot.”
Hmmm, I wonder how long it’s OK for me to stay in this coffee shop after buying only one drink? I just had lunch and I don’t want any more coffee, but I feel rude sitting here without getting anything else.
Ah, the dilemmas of life.
17 march 2005 ~ 13:25
A day out
Wow, time flies. My cold got really bad just after I last posted here. I think I overdid my walks in the chilly, damp air, and that put me over the edge. I was in bed for several days, including one 24-hour period where I didn’t wake up at all. That was pretty weird. I’m pretty much over it now, but still have a rather annoying residual cough.
Some people I met very kindly took me on a tour this weekend, all around the northern part of the city, across the river in North and West Vancouver. I took a lot of photos, some of which are below. First, we went to a small town called Deep Cove, which has a spectacular beach and marina, and is popular with kayakers.
Then we drove part of the way up the side of the mountain to a scenic lookout in Cypress Park, from which one can see Mount Baker, 90 miles away in the United States, and across downtown Vancouver to Vancouver Island.
From there we headed to Horseshoe Bay, where we watched the ferries come in. This is another very pretty little town in a spectacular setting, surrounded by snowcapped mountains and tree-covered islands.
Thence to Whytecliff Park, which was the highlight for me. Photographs cannot capture how beautiful the bay there is. It’s also popular with divers; that day, there was a big group of Japanese tourists in diving gear. Apparently people come a long way to dive at that beach. There’s a decent-sized island (first picture below) in the middle of the bay that you can walk out to across a path of rocks.
Finally, we came back to the city across the Lion’s Gate Bridge into Stanley Park, where we stopped at Prospect Point to watch the sunset.
I’ll post more photos as I get them.
14 march 2005 ~ 16:16
Skyscrapers and everything
So, I’ve been in Vancouver for a few days now. I’ve been pretty busy getting myself all sorted out, buying all the little things I need here, but couldn’t bring with me: bed linens, towels, toiletries, kitchenware, groceries, and so on. I’ve been walking around a lot too, trying to build a decent cognitive map of the city. It’s pretty gridlike for the most part, which helps a lot.
The place I’m renting is pretty nice. It’s in the West End, a very nice area west of downtown, right next to Stanley Park and English Bay. I took some photos of the view from just outside the front door of the building. Looking east, you can see part of downtown Vancouver:
Looking south, you can see English Bay, where there is a beach and a seawall to walk along, and across to the Kitsilano area:
Looking west, you can see the edge of Stanley Park, which is bigger than New York’s Central Park:
Finally, looking north, you can see the mountains of North Vancouver (difficult to see in this photo, but it’s pretty stunning to see these huge snowcapped mountains looming above the crest of the street):
I really lucked out with this place. I have two roommates, but they never seem to be here. I’ve met one of them only three times in four days, and have not seen any trace of the other one, though I’m told he leaves early and gets back late. I’m starting to wonder if he really exists. Heh.
Anyway, I seem to have the biggest room: very spacious, with hardwood floors, an en suite bathroom, high speed Internet access, cable TV, and a view west over Stanley Park (and past several other huge apartment buildings) to the mountains of West Vancouver. Very nice.
I’m not used to living in an apartment building facing other similar buildings, though. This morning I suddenly realized that all the people across the street would be able to see me standing there in my underwear. I’ll have to remember to keep the blinds closed in the morning.
It’s been somewhat grey and drizzly since I got here. I’ve been caught out in rain showers a couple of times, and now I’m afraid I’m starting to get a cold, so I’m going to lay low for a day or two, alas. Back soon.
5 march 2005 ~ 12:41