Is it over already?

Another Christmas comes and goes. This one different to the rest of course, because I'm in another country. Duh.

It was relatively uneventful I have to say, but here's some things that didn't happen:

- Having one present left underneath the tree with no name tag. "Who's this for? Who's it from?" And anyway it's always a tin of Roses for the whole family.

- Having a tree. Erm, yeah. If it's any consolation we piled the presents in the corner where the tree would have been.

- Usual Christmas TV. I don't think I saw anything on the Canadian stations that was remotely Christmassy. Then again, Christmassy in the UK these days means Ant & Dec so you can keep them.

And then there were some things that did happen:

- Fighting a battle all bloody afternoon with the smoke alarm. I was ready to tear it off the ceiling at one point. I've said it before though, my kitchen is not designed for cooking. Only heating.

- Jingle All The Way. It's still as good as it was all those years ago. How Arnold has never been nominated for an Oscar in his entire career I'll never know.

- Having good food. Well eventually. It turns out that some Canadian ovens set their temperature in Fahrenheit and not Celsius. So when the food has been in for an hour and still hasn't cooked it's because 220F is not hot enough to cook a beef joint. Once again Greg cooked up some excellent food and showed why he works in a kitchen and I sell games to teenagers.

It was also a time to think about those less fortunate than yourself. By that I primarily mean Rosie, Greg and Piers who were unlucky enough to share Christmas with the grumpiest bastard in Vancouver. I actually took a knife to a balloon at one point. I blame retail, it's beaten the festive season out of me over the course of five years. Then again anything that wakes me up before midday on my day off usually makes me apoplectic with rage.

A Festivus for the rest of us

I didn't get the Festivus pole in the end. I could have, but at the end of the holidays I would have ended up with a 6 foot aluminium pole and no crawl space to put it in. Plus it's $40 that could be better spent on other things. And by 'other things' I mean 'games'.

It's getting pretty busy at work as expected, but this is still my best retail Christmas by far. I'm only working on the 23rd (that's right, infringing on my right to celebrate new holidays) and then I'm off for the next 2 days. Since there are a few of us English people we're spending Christmas at my place. Should be good, you'll be happy to know I picked up Jingle All The Way on DVD last week. I would have got it on Blu Ray but it's region coded. Shame.

- Greg came out with a classic when we were out shopping. He saw how much I was spending on a Christmas gift for someone and looked incredulously at me, repeating the amount in a shocked tone. I looked at him and said in a smug fashion "Yeah, that's right. You're going to feel guilty about what you got me." He sighed and said "You're the only person I know who would use Christmas to be vindictive".

- Someone in my family thinks there might actually be something going on between Greg and I. This is great. I've been looking for something to wind them up for years and I might have finally cracked it.

- "This game is in English right?". Seriously?

- Avatar was fairly decent. It's not the most amazing film that you'll ever see like some people seem to be saying, to be honest the plot is fairly predictable stuff and I didn't really feel any empathy with the main characters to care what happened to them. But it was better than 2012.

So Happy Festivus everyone. I'm off for the Airing of Grievances.

The numbers game

6 months. 6 bloody months. I cannot believe I've been here for half a year already. On the one hand it's gone so quickly, but on the other it seems like so long ago I was taking my first tentative steps onto the bus from the airport to downtown Vancouver.

In honour of this milestone I thought I'd do a few numbers that might be in some way interesting. So here goes:

200 - Unique visitors to the blog. Well at least since I started tracking the stats in mid-August. Who the hell are all these people? I don't even know 200 people, Facebook tells me I don't. 12 countries represented as well.

781 - The number of emails in my inbox. Don't be fooled, 90% of those are from Facebook. That makes me feel sad.

49 - days since Rosie was asked to write the blog entry. Apparently not asking her to do things means she gets them done. Hasn't worked for the last 2 weeks.

5 (conservative estimate) - people who think there was something going on between me and Rosie. There wasn't. Sorry.

172 - people who think there's something going on between me and Greg. There is. Sorry.

4 - people who've offered to marry me so I can stay in the country. I think one of them was even fairly serious.

34307 (conservative estimate) - people who have thought I'm Australian. Someone in the shop asked me the other day "Are you Australian?" To which I replied "No, English". She then said "Ohhh, that's better".

18 - games bought since I arrived, 3 per month. I have a problem.

16 - amount in dollars for the first round of drinks. Lesson learnt = don't buy imported beer.

25 (estimate) - times Greg has told me "You're a bad man".

10 - number of points Liverpool are behind United. HA. Sorry Piers.

700 (estimate) - dollars I've spent on lunch whilst working. That's ridiculous. I blame Quiznos and their delicious subs. In fact I want one now.

0 - number of times I've regretted coming to Canada.

Here's to the next 6 months. Unless the marriage thing pans out. I'll let you know.

4 hours that took

Want to know what Greg and I did with our Saturday afternoon?



Yep, 4 hours it took to edit. My lappy nearly went into meltdown on several occasions. In fact so did I. But I think it turned out OK, apart from the fact the quality seems awful on YouTube. For those Canadians who don't know, the opening theme is from a British TV show called Ski Sunday that used to be on years ago on...err...Sundays. Props to Greg for the camera work again.

So the remaining highlights of the week:

- All Canadians can ice skate. It's like they're born with them attached to their ankles or something. My experience of ice rinks is 50% of people clinging to the side for dear life (myself included) while 25% wander gingerly onto the ice with their arms flailing. The other 25% know what they're doing. The percentages here are slightly different. 100% people knew what they were doing until I stepped out onto the ice and brought down the percentage. I even got overtaken by a kid who can't have been older than 5. Having said all that though it was actually quite fun once I'd got a little used to it.

- Some joker let off a can of pepper spray in the mall last week. We wondered what was going on when everyone in the vicinity of the shop across from us came flooding out with their eyes watering and coughing like there's no tomorrow. I was hoping for something interesting like an onion bomb but it turned out to be pepper spray. Pretty rancid stuff as well, I was coughing just walking past on the way from the food court.

- It's bloody cold. Freezing. It started snowing today as well but it hasn't settled. But it's not Christmas yet, I haven't seen the commercial with the Coca-Cola trucks on the TV yet.

Hard to believe this will be my 28th Christmas. The great shame is that Jingle All The Way has only been around for 14 of them.

They shoot snowboarders, don't they?

It's been several years since I did any kind of skiing, over a decade in fact. So it was good to try some snowboarding and hit the slopes at the weekend. And hit the slopes I did. Several times. Very hard. But more on the injuries later...

To give a bit of background the company who looks after holiday visa people like us were arranging a trip to Mount Seymour for an introductory lesson and a day snowboarding. Greg got very excited about this and coerced me into signing up. Well we would have if I'd have got down there in time. In my defence they changed the deadline. Anyway we were able to arrange it ourselves so a few days later we were booked in for a 10 o'clock lesson. This meant getting up early.

Those of you who know me best will know I am not a morning person. Regardless of the plan for that day; going to the moon, playing football with movie stars, eating at Pizza Express (we're talking crème de la crème); I will not want to get up to do it. So it was with, shall we say, some reluctance that I got up at 6.30 on Saturday morning and donned the quite ridiculous level of clothing required to fall on my arse all day up a mountain. I arrived at Greg's place suitably grumpy and full of suggestions to pack it in and go back to bed.

Thanks to the early morning roads and Vancouver's frankly excellent public transport system we were 1000 metres higher and only $7 poorer less than 2 hours later. I, of course, moaned the whole way there. Seriously, how Greg didn't manage to smash my face in I'll never know. The views from the peak were fantastic, which I guess leads nicely into the photos.

Downtown Vancouver from the top of Mount Seymour. You can make out one of the stadiums and what I'm guessing is Cambie Bridge.

Surveying the vista. I like this one because firstly I'm not on the snowboard and secondly you can't see my face.

Greg man. I don't think he likes the ski suit he bought but I thought it was alright. We also had major concerns about the bottoms not being able to fit in the boots. These concerns turned out to be complete rubbish.

Hmm. The words 'Bambi on ice' spring to mind. If it looks like I'm not moving, it's because I'm not.

This photo is mainly for me so I can use it as a point of reference. Something actually was worth getting up that early for. Someone write down the date and time.

We both picked up the basics fairly quickly and did OK for our first time, at least I think so. We had the obvious falls but all in all it was pretty good, we both enjoyed it until our battered and beaten bodies couldn't take getting on that bloody rope to get to the top of the slope again. So much so I think I might be heading back this weekend.

Good times. Props to Greg for bringing, losing and subsequently finding his camera. I imagine we would have more photos but it's a bit like taking your camera to a football match, it's just not done.

Injury list

- Bruised coccyx

- Pain in both arms

- 2 bruised knees

- Left wrist doesn't quite work

Happy with that list, could have been a lot worse. Although that bruised coccyx is a real pain in the ass. Ha ha ha! No sorry, that one was bad. Even for me.

Would the World's Greatest Detective approve?

This should be the first of a double blog post extravaganza. I was hoping a certain person would write up the birthday entry but now it looks like I'll have to write it myself. To be fair though Rosie's been ill this week so I'll refrain from laying it on too thick.

So what better way to continue than letting the pictures do most of the talking.

The Batcake. More top work from the resident chef Greg, even including bananas in this one. For some reason I've gained a reputation for saying 'lulz'. I have no idea on this one. lulz

One of my presents was a bear from the dollar store. For some reason we decided he had one too many legs and removed one for him. Ever wanted to know what bears are filled with? Wonder no more.

I feel sorry for that poor thing. I tried to find one of him intact but they weren't any. So here's one of him inside-out.

Erm, yeah. Less said about this one the better.

See, this is why the blog isn't getting written. I thought that thing at the bottom was a slice of pizza with a face.

After the cake eating and bear ripping we headed out to a bar in Gastown for a drink. And sadly it was just the one since two thirds of us had work early in the morning. But the bar we chose just happened to be the Vancouver Man Utd Supporter's Club. Result.

Other than that it's been a busy week, topped off with snowboarding on Saturday. I'll do a separate post for that one, but suffice to say it was pretty good. lulz