Seriously, someone lend me $3000 for that Batman costume

Last week I welcomed my first ever visitor to arrive at the blog via a search engine. And what where they searching for? 'Gay bingo Vancouver'. To be honest I think they probably left disappointed. On a more boring note I've edited the settings so anyone can leave comments now, so feel free to post hilarious and/or disparaging remarks.

Pretty stunning quote from Mad Phil (the conspiracy theorist) when Greg ran into him on Sunday morning. Although I wasn't there to witness it I'm told he was looking to obtain some passport photos and was displeased with the results. "I just looked a bit...mad". Good old Mad Phil. He's even starting to realise it himself. And then to cap it off he raised the question of whether Greg was 'still believing' the information fed to him by reputable news channels.

Hint to potential movie-goers; District 9 is alright but not great. I think the director may have found it useful to film some of the movie without a shaky cam so the audience can tell what the hell is going on. I wish I'd spent the money on The Final Destination instead but got put off by the fact it's only 81 minutes. But you know where you are with people being eaten by escalators.

And yeah this is an appeal to anyone with a spare couple of grand, on either side of the Atlantic, since that Batman costume isn't going to buy itself. It would be useful for the one fancy dress party I will go to all year. And if I decide to, you know, fight crime.

Slurms Mackenzie is spinning in his grave

So it's been a pretty stale few days, just going through the same work-sleep cycle that everyone else goes through. So the sparse highlights include:

- A friend of my boss having to go to hospital because a raccoon bit their head. The day before they were supposed to start their new job

- A guy trying to return a game for a refund. From 5 years ago. He even had the receipt

- Rosie eating all of her flatmate's food. Including the icing sugar, on it's own

- Seeing a kick ass Batman costume on eBay. Custom fitted to you and the guy only makes 10 per year since they're so difficult to make. Now all I need is $3000

Since we are all so skint Greg, myself and the girls and heading out for an evening walk tomorrow. Which sounds sad and to be honest it kind of is but the scenery is such that pretty much any walk around Vancouver is picturesque. Plus it means there's the opportunity to buy a large McFlurry (yep, two sizes over here. Imagine eating one out of small drink cup and you're nearly there) with enough sugar to bake 16 wedding cakes. I'm fairly sure one of the ingredients listed is 'diabetes'.

Also what's with you chumps voting yes in the poll?! Picture the scene - you find a can of Slurm, which you've never seen before, and buy it even though it cost you 2 quid. Bearing in mind Futurama is your favourite show ever, you plan to not only savour the drink but keep the can since you probably won't find another one. Meanwhile you travel to Canada (bearing in mind the expiration date is AFTER you return) and without naming names, a male relative decides to drink it. And throw away the can.

That's not cool man. Not cool.

The big differences

So I guess in the interest of fairness it's only right I should spend some time on the things that I really like about living in Canada. Now I know I said there would be loads, and of course there are, but there are definitely some that are more equal than others.

- Food. Seems trivial, but tell me that after a bowl of Fruit Loops. I shun the Frosties and Cokes of this world in favour of Captain Crunch and Cranberry Soda. The variety is amazing and just when you think you've discovered it all something else pops up. Except the cheese that comes in a squirty tube and looks like emulsion. They can keep that.

- People being happier. Bit of a cliché perhaps, but people generally are nicer here. I've mentioned this to Canadian people I've met and they seem to think they're pretty grumpy and I'll see that come winter. Maybe I will, but when customers are telling ME to have a good day you know it's different to the UK.

- Animals. Dogs, cats, squirrels; that's all you ever see in the UK. Here you have all those (as well as black squirrels) in addition to raccoons, skunks and seals. If I went up to the forest in North Vancouver there's a small chance I'd see a bear; and a small chance is a lot bigger than no chance. Today Rosie and I saw some unidentified black bird dive beneath the water for fish and he literally disappeared. I'm not even sure if he came back up for air, but it doesn't really compare to a Mallard shaking himself because some kid threw bread on his back.

- The price of stuff. OK cell phones, bank charges and drinks aside, a lot of stuff is cheap. I bought two huge bottles of soda today for about £1, even this lappy was about £50 cheaper than it would have been in the UK.

So there is other unimportant stuff like paying less tax and lower crime rates but no-one wants to hear about that. And I'm not trying to paint Vancouver as this wonderland where everything is awesome, in fact there are some pretty shady areas of town. But there seems to be a sense of community here as well, which is quite surprising for a town that has so much income from tourism. Now if only I could find some people in this community that are United fans...

The little differences

Since things have turned out well so far on the Canadian adventure, you might think I don't miss the UK at all. Which if true, would make for an exceptionally short and boring blog entry. So happily there are a few things I genuinely miss.

- Football. Obviously. They don't even really have soccertainment over here, and no disrespect to the Vancouver Whitecaps but they're not great. Even if their goalkeeper is called Jay Nolly

- Cheap drinks. No such thing as a Wetherspoon's over here so the cheapest drink I've had is $5. Most are about $6-10, it really puts you off going for a quiet one knowing you'll be $20 out of pocket after a couple. Plus the tips!

- TV without commercials. I even get them on the BBC website now because I log in from outside the UK. No such thing as iPlayer over here either so no Top Gear for me

- The ability to jaywalk. I mean I guess I could do it here, but since all the streets are 5 miles wide I don't think I could run across without having to stop for a break

- A credit/debit card. This I'm going to look into since my ATM card does basically nothing. What if I want to order a pizza online?

So hardly a ground-breaking trip-ruining list, but they're little things nonetheless. You may notice I've left family and friends off the list and that's for a couple of reasons; firstly it's pretty much a given. Of course when you move away it's different getting used to new people. And secondly I know it will wind up mum and dad when they see they're not first on the list.

Of course the other side of this will be in 10 months time when I'm back home and I come up with a list of things that I miss about Canada. In fact what is the word limit on a blog post?

Commercials for morons

Here's one thing I've noticed over the last few days that never happened in the UK. Commercials seem to have ridiculous warnings on them either not to attempt stuff or that what's happening in the commercial isn't real. Now I understand this could be providing a public service in some instances, but here's the examples that I've seen in the last 24 hours:

- A commercial showing a woman jumping upside down from about 3 stories into a dress being held out of a balcony so she won't get white marks from her deodorant. In small letters at the bottom, 'Dramatization. Do not attempt'

- A car being picked up by a large crane, like they have in car crushing yards. Then another car falling from the sky and landing where the other car was. In small letters at the bottom, 'Do not attempt'. Do not attempt what?? I like the notion that car companies feel we have heavy lifting equipment lying around in our back yards

- A trash can shown to be emitting an unpleasant smell with large green wavy lines of vapour inflitrating the whole house. These grow bigger and look like the things cartoonists draw to illustrate pies left on window sills that smell good. In small letters at the bottom, 'Dramatization'

I assume this occurs because at some point, somewhere, someone has sued some company because they're weren't germs the size of gremlins in their toilet bowls. This is it folks. This is the society we live in.

I'd love to discuss this further but I've just seen Toilet Duck go into the bathroom and I've had enough of him stealing my aftershave.

New lappy/laptop

Since it seems we can't agree on what is the best way of describing a portable computer I'll have to be bilingual. Like stupid French being everywhere in Canada, even on my bloody keyboard. As if a French/Canadian person doesn't know that 'Esc' means Escape and needs to have 'Eschapp' written underneath. I put it to Compaq that if someone needs that explaining then laptop computing is at least one stage ahead of them.

Other than that there's not much to update. I saw a guy (who clearly had no idea how to order food) in McDonald's today ask for some gravy. Needless to say he left the counter disappointed. It occured to me on the way out that Morgan Spurlock needn't have bothered supersizing himself for a month since as far as I can tell all the bums in Vancouver are working on that 24/7/365. It's amazing how immune you can become to anyone begging when you experience it on a daily basis. Actually maybe that's just me.

Other highlights from the week include:

- Seeing someone walking their ferret near the Chinatown Skytrain station

- Seeing someone walking their cat on Davie St. Here's a tip - if you put a lead on a cat and go outside you're going where the cat wants to go

- Checking out the products at the supermarket in Chinatown. They have got some crazy shit going on in that place, topped off by the 12 vacuum-packed snack size baby crabs

- A dude coming in the shop and telling us that in the film GI Joe, Dennis Quaid says there are weapons out there that the world has never seen. 'And that is true' - then leaving. He did this twice.

Pretty much ran out of ideas for the poll. That's the best I could come up with.

Ode to the Samsung M230

Would you like a phone that will infuriate you on a daily basis? Do you want to find new and exciting ways for a portable phone to amaze and depress you? Would you like a phone that makes even the most basic functions extremely difficult and time consuming?

If the answer is yes, the Samsung M230 is for you!

Experience a wide range of completely useless functions including:

- Changing the colour of the number you dial
- A countdown timer that is really a text field
- Deleting entire text messages because you pressed 'Back' too many times and the phone was frozen at the time
- Bluetooth to other phones (please note the Samsung M230 has no idea what anything on any other Bluetooth device is. But you can pair them!)

Want to use the same ringtones as your text alert? No problem! In fact, you have no choice! Please note you must listen to the entire 30 second ringtone since there are no options for beeps.

See! As other features you thought you wanted are now severely lacking, including but not limited to:

- Having predictive text that works (including showing words you think are available but are actually not!)
- Being able to change the background to anything other than the 6 images supplied
- Having the phone still ring even when you've answered it

Act now and we will throw in the worthless predictive text dictionary which does NOT include words such as tall, sure, little and kitchen!

This is a limited time offer and will expire when these phones are shipped to developing countries in aid packages. Dial 1-800-M230-SUCKS today!

Gay bingo - the evidence

So I promised and now I'll deliver. Well I won't really deliver, I'll publish the photos Lucy delivered. So it's kind of a team effort.

To set the scene a few of us went to this gay club on Davie St called Celebrities to play bingo. I needed a little cajoling but not a great deal and so began the adventure.


Rosie pre-game. You'd think that is her style but...


Yep. And who do we have to thank for this?


Why is it I'm always talking when someone pulls a camera?


The pack of us. Except Maddie who only seems to like having her photo taken when there's something in front of her face.


Receiving the goods from a drag queen. Ahem.


Making off with the loot. Incidentally I haven't even used any of the prizes yet. Maybe I'll leave the free meal until I have absolutely no money and no food and have to busk to get enough to leave a tip. Or I might just use it this weekend.

So that was it. And the drag queen didn't kiss me.

I love BC day

Turns out if you go to the bank and ask very nicely for them to clear your cheque, they do it for you.

Result.

I hate BC day

Yeah I loved the fake one a couple of weeks and the real one earlier in the week but now I think it's crap. And I'll tell you why. I paid in a cheque to HSBC last Friday but since Monday wasn't a working day I have to wait until Monday to withdraw the funds. Which means I have to take money out of my already withdrawn UK account just to feed myself for the weekend. Extremely annoying.

So I now have a place to stay and for the first time since arriving was able to unpack my bag. I never thought I'd appreciate being able to hang up clothes or fold away t-shirts but there you go. It also became apparent after a few hours that it can get a little boring being inside with nothing to do so any chance I've got has been spent going out. For instance last night myself, Greg, Maddie and Rosie spent a few hours near the beach playing chess (really) and having a few warm ones. It was livened up by the visit of not one, not two, but three skunks which sent the girls into a kind of mild panic. Rosie especially did not appreciate me telling her it was right behind her on several occasions despite it clearly being very funny to do so.

So this is kind of why I came I guess. I have job now and a place to sleep, after nearly 2 months I've achieved the four-fector. Am I glad I did it? Definitely. It's not like I could leave my house in the UK and walk for 2 minutes and be at the centre of a metropolis. Or walk for 20 minutes and have a massive park with mountain views within sight. But it's also getting out the routine which has done me good.

Maybe this will carry on when I eventually return home but I guess that's up to me. I'll also have to keep an eye out when I buy a lappy next week so I'm not lulled into the same thing again. But I'm pretty sure I'll be able to keep a lid on it.

In other news it seems Stone Cold Steve Austin shops at my local IGA Marketplace (kinda means nothing to me, but the guy working there who was helping him seemed very excited). And McDonald's also do a decent iced coffee for $2 (the addiction is starting to creep in). Kudos to the one person who didn't like coffee. They're keeping it real.

Something about always landing on my feet?

So the last couple of days have been interesting. After a night in Guantanamo I went to the front desk and discovered they were fresh out of rooms for Friday night, as well as the usual hostel I stay at. Whilst digesting this on the way to work I checked my bank account to discover that I had not been paid and still had that good old 38 cents in my account. So now, no money and no place to live.

Thankfully a couple of paychecks turned up at work that morning and I was able to cash one of them at a Bank of Montreal (only a $5 fee which I thought was alright) so I ticked one of the boxes. I messaged one of my friends who said I could probably stay on their floor, but after consulting the landlady this no longer became on option. What problem she had with me and only 3 other people sleeping on her living room floor I'll never know. So once I left work I was seriously contemplating a night under the stars, especially since my friendly local Comfort Inn offered me a room for $160. I called one hostel who told me they'd called most of the others for someone else and they were all full. I needed a slice of luck.

And one came along.

On the way to Templeton's Diner I went into the HI Central even though I'd been told they were full and asked with the lowest expectation possible if they were full. And amazingly they were not, they had 2 beds left. Once I'd calmed down and stopped telling the guy behind the desk I loved him I paid my way and headed off into the sunset for some yam soup and a grilled cheese sandwich.

And the hostel was amazing. Air conditioned rooms, an ensuite bathroom, free breakfast, it had the lot. I actually had to use a blanket since the room was getting chilly during the night, as opposed to the last place which had no air conditioning, no fan, windows that opened a tiny bit (not that you'd want them open, there was a club downstairs) and 7 other people in there. Sweating. Even the breakfast at the HI was good, although I understood nothing of the conversation the German people were having at my table (apart from the words Ferris Bueller).

So yeah, good times. I'm moving into the flat later today and should be able to buy a lappy in a couple of weeks. And it turns out that Monday was not BC day, that's the coming Monday. This is what happens when you read the wrong rota at work.