Come on, buy my stuff you chumps

Turns out selling stuff is harder than I first thought. So far I've managed to tentatively sell DJ Hero for $50 and...er...that's it. Some clown offered me $30 for it. I do however feel sorry for my work colleagues, whom over the next 4 weeks are going to be subjected to me trying to sell them my stuff with increasing levels of desperation.

- Just over 4 weeks left until I leave work. This also means I have to use my staff discount while I still can. Hmm...maybe Just Cause 2 is worth a punt after all. Or Uncharted 2. Also I could use another 360 controller.

- Student Loans reckon I'll start owing them 250 quid a month starting June. I'm going to take a wild guess here and say that isn't going to pan out.

- No volcanic eruptions in the next 6 weeks please.

- We can win the World Cup this year. BELIEVE.

- Every time I seem to look at the time, usually on my phone, it's followed by "Oh ****!" and me scrambling to do something/be somewhere/get up in an extreme hurry. This never used to happen.

- My parents are going to get me insured on their car for when I get back. And they'd better, since I'm going to beat the hell out of that thing. Basically the plan is to put at least 2-3000 miles on the clock so that when the time comes to eventually sell it to me, I can get a better price. I might try putting diesel in to see what happens. Actually no, that's not true, I'm not going anywhere near a petrol station with it.

Greg, Rosie and Piers are still getting all up in everyone's grill on Facebook about what an amazing time they're having in California. Bastards.

FIRE SALE

Right it's time to start getting rid of all this crap I've accumulated over the last 10 months. I'm already having to buy another suitcase to pack bulk stuff like night vision goggles, Pandora's Box, Ezio figurines etc. So a rudimentary inventory highlighted the sort of stuff I have to shift:

- Final Fantasy 7, 8, 9, Anthology & Tactics
- Legend of Dragoon
- Fear Effect (remind me again why I bought that?)
- Katamari Damacy
- King of the Fighters 00/01
- DJ Hero
- Burnout Paradise
- PS3 console
- A couple of crappy Blu Rays I can't even remember the names of
- Green hair spray
- Elvis-style sunglasses
- Snowboarding goggles & snow pants
- Some crappy mouse that cost me about $20

Jesus Christ I bought too many games. I thought I'd gone some way to conquering this problem. Anyway all sensible offers considered. As long as you're in Vancouver.

:*******************(

I promised sad times, and thanks to Greg's camera I can now deliver.

 The last group photo. In fact it might be the only group photo, come to think of it. I like the subtle thumbs up from Greg.

Emotional scenes as Piers and I share a manly hug. I love the fact we got the owner of Taf's (the bar that's always empty) in the background. And in the mirror, in a sort of perpetuating loop of awkwardness.

Best. Photo. Ever. Greg said he was doing it on purpose, but I think it was a candid shot.

Trying to make Brewster cry. Didn't happen.

The final hug. Emotion got the better of me here it seems. Or I stood on something.

I told you they were sad times. Made even sadder by the fact that these three are now all over my Facebook posting smug photos showing what a great time they're having. Damn you kids! *shakes fist*

Holy crap it's less than 2 months

60 days. How did this happen? I think the departure of Team Family made it seem a little more real, but even so I can't believe it's so soon. It's only about 6 weeks until I finish work, after that the challenge is to motivate myself to get out of bed to experience as much of Vancouver as I can before I leave on a jet plane. Meanwhile:

- It was a good send-off for the English crew. I was disappointed that Rosie didn't cry though, Greg and I tried our best. I was all sad face and everything.

"Do you have Playstation Network cards?"
"Yes, we have the $20 ones."
"How much are they?"
"..."

- Finally the sun is coming out again. And we can see it in the sky. No volcanic ash or ANYTHING.

- Quiznos are doing a small prime rib steak & cheese sub for $2.99. I got genuinely excited about this.

So here's to Team Family. You'll be happy to know out of all of us the person who got the most emotional was my mum, apparently that video did it. There were some great shots from the last night so when they get uploaded I'll put the highlights on the blog.

Goodbye Team Family. I'll miss you.

Thursday sees the end of an era with three-quarters of Team Family leaving Vancouver. Greg, Rosie and Piers will be heading off for a travelling adventure down the USA's west coast. I'm not sure what exactly is planned, in fact I'm not sure they know either, but I know Las Vegas, San Francisco and Los Angeles are scheduled stops. It sounds like an awesome trip and I know they'll have a great time. From there they all have their own plans and ultimately it means the next time we'll all be in the same country will be several months from now in the good old UK.

In the spirit of the occasion I thought it would be fitting to go through some of our highlights of the last 10 months. Plus I get to write it in bullet points.

- Meeting Greg for the first time. We were both sharing the same hostel room and came to the realisation that we were in fact the same people who had spoken on Facebook the week before. But not before one of the first things (in my jet lagged, hyperactive state) I said to Greg was "Nice sink. I wonder how many people have got up in the night and had a slash in it"

- After watching the fireworks on the beach at English Bay, the Mounted Police coming round and clearing everyone off the sand. Rosie's reaction to this: "Do we have to leave because of horses?"

- Just as I came out of the back room at work hearing a familiar English voice say "JP!" and turning round to see Piers. So strange that the last time the two of us saw each other would have been on a football field in Cambridge, then going for lunch in Vancouver.

- Christmas 2009. This was a highlight for everyone else you understand. How they managed to get to sleep on the floor of the living room I'll never know. Having the oven set to Fahrenheit instead of Celsius, the smoke alarm going off almost constantly, Greg dropping a full tub of pancake batter in the kitchen; the fun never stopped.

- The waitress in The Templeton constantly trying to predict our orders and getting it consistently wrong. Also that she seems to know Piers has a regular order even though he eats there the least out of all of us.

- Finding another regular venue in The Furniture Warehouse, sorry I mean The 'Famous' Warehouse. The reason we like this place is because all the food is under $5. If I had a dollar for every time I've heard the suggestion "Works Burger?" then I wouldn't have to sell games to teenagers.

There's plenty more; snowboarding, Erik's tour (the random old guy in the above video), gay bingo, Halloween, the list goes on. So I guess what I'm saying is it's been a great few months with you guys and I love you all. Except Greg since he dumped me on Facebook, the swine.

So we have the emotional goodbye drinks on Wednesday. It's going to be messy, isn't it?

Execute Order an6

Some of you may remember I posted an entry several months ago about how my phone is complete garbage. Well it's found a new level recently and this has been named 'an6 mode'.

Essentially if I try to type any word in a text message that starts with the button combination 2-6-6, like complain, complete or bonfire, the phone will think anything I want to type will start with 'an6'. So the suggestions I get, in order, are:

- an6e
- an6k
- an6sold

Any variation from this is not allowed. So typing the letter 't' after that would not work. The phone just does nothing. Also, I forgot to mention this entire process will cause the phone to freeze for up to two minutes (I checked) and when not frozen, slow down throughout the entire ordeal. The only way out of this is to delete the entire message, which it will sometimes do on its own, leaving just the letter 'k'.

There aren't any words to describe my feelings for this phone. At least it constantly surprises me. Just when I think I've seen it all, it finds a completely new way to screw with my mind and my text messages. And the most surprising thing of all is how many of these phones I see in Vancouver. Barely a day goes by when I don't hear the same ring tone or text tone (which isn't hard, there's only 6 and you can't upgrade them). So there's a tonne of other poor bastards walking around with this piece of crap. I can't believe the phone I had in 1999 is better than this one.

"How's the weather over there?"

The answer is: a bit windy. Quite windy in fact. Since it was my day off today and I had nothing better to do I decided to head to Wal Mart in North Vancouver. Which involves walking through Stanley Park and over the Lions Gate Bridge. Well it does if you're me anyway.

I was on the phone to my mum at the time trying to convince her I was still alive, since she'd seen a show in the UK about how sometimes people living abroad go missing and turn up dead. I hadn't been heard from in a few days so naturally she assumed this was what had occurred. So it probably didn't help when I was walking alongside the road through Stanley Park and remarked how windy it was. Shortly after this I heard a very loud crack and looked to my left and saw three tall trees swaying rather nervously in a particularly strong gust of wind. I was disappointed; I thought a tree had gone over and I missed it. But almost immediately there was another sharp breath of wind and what I can only describe as the sound of a tree breaking and falling. And there it was, a tree that was easily 100 feet tall just plummeting to the ground in the forest on the North side of the park. The thing came crashing down with a lot of satisfying wood-breaking noises. I found this extremely exciting; my mum did not. "How long until you're out of the forest?" I also came upon another tree that has previously fallen and was blocking the sidewalk and one lane of the road. After successfully negotiating this, I headed for the bridge.

Immediately after setting foot onto the bridge I seemed to feel a little weird, almost seasick. Then I realised it was because the bridge was moving underfoot. This information nearly sent mum over the edge, again I found this quite funny. And it got better. Walking over a bridge has never been so much fun. The wind was buffeting me almost the entire way, I had to walk at an angle into the wind so I wasn't blown into the road. A few times it took me a little way left, at least it was blowing me further into the bridge and not over the side. I had to shout to make myself heard on the phone, the noise was pretty deafening. I also saw a pigeon that had taken refuge in a non-windy corner of a support strut. I've never seen a nervous pigeon before but this one looked scared out of its mind. And so it was with careful steps and nervous parents asking me how far I had to go that I made it over to the relative sanctuary of North Vancouver.

So that was my Friday. I'm sorry mum, but it was very funny. I told you I wouldn't phone you when I got to Wal Mart to let you know I was alright.

And when I did get there? The mall with the Wal Mart in had a complete power cut. What a waste of time.