Thursday, November 30, 2006

Getting warmer...

Today it was only about -15 and -25 after wind chill. You could feel the difference too. Last night I froze my butt off taking photos at Canada Olympic Park. Didn't even really get a lot of photos taken. It was a nice field trip overall. Manny (my mum's friend's cousin) took me around to the COP and the center (whose name escapes me at this present moment) where people trained for the Winter Olympics. Saw a friendly ice hockey game and some speed skaters training. Love the speed skating. I wanna try it out despite the risk of injury. We also had some Wendy's for dinner. I had the triple burger. It was heart attackingly awesome.

I didn't really get much sleep last night. I attribute it to some minor jet lag and some major snoring in the room. Regardless, I was awake with more than enough time to spare to make my banking appointment. I opened up the bank account without much dramas, and had a bit of a stroll around the block in the nice and warm weather. It was still fairly cold though, so I didn't stay out for too long. I couldn't find any bookstores that stocked Scott Pilgrim, so that was a bit of a bummer. Hopefully I'll get off my lazy ass and check out the comic book store tomorrow when it's even warmer. I think it's meant to be around -4.

Anyway, tonight was fairly eventless. Aggie (my mum's friend) picked me up from the hostel at around 7:45 and we went shopping. I got some food supplies for Panorama and some Reese's. Gotta love peanut butter with chocolate. It confuddles me how Australia gastronomists have not made this simple yet extraordinary correlation between peanut butter, chocolate, and awesome. Anyway, this is the one sweet I love to get anytime I'm in North America, with the possible exception of Mr. Goodbar, but I haven't been able to find that here yet.

When I got back to the hostel, I had a beer with a couple of the guys in my dorm room. Cool Canadian guys here for work. It seems that Calgary has massive demand for jobs and yet an incredible shortage on accommodation. As a result, you see lots of Canadians around in the hostel, and you see a lot of homeless people on the street. Apparently around half the homeless people in Calgary have jobs. Very strange. The guys also tell me of this bar downtown where draft beer is 25c. We're gonna hit it tomorrow night. I'll be drunk before I spend a dollar!

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Snowboards and souvlaki

Today, as the previous post touches upon, was rather cold. As a result, I stayed in for most of the day. I did, however, get some money changed, and also do a bit of shopping when I met up with my mum's friend who had access to a car (very useful for this weather). I found the boot I wanted but I didn't buy it straight away because it was at RRP (and quite an expensive RRP at that). The board was another matter. I found a fairly good one at around my size for around CAD 200 after tax, so I decided that was too good to pass up.

Afterwards, we decided to find somewhere to eat. We settled on Opa!, a Greek fast food joint whereupon I discovered quite possibly the best lamb souvlaki ever. It was so good I had to have another. Now my breath stinks like onion. I want more.

The wind chill factor

It's now -25 degrees, but feels like -39 due to the crazy wind chill. I kid you not.

Monday, November 27, 2006

Calgary

I'm sitting here at Honolulu airport, waiting for my flight to board after a brief stopover in Hawaii, a bit annoyed at myself that I didn't bring more things to keep me entertained on the flight. Most of it was spent listening to music and podcasts.

Some random cliff notes on the trip so far...

  • Air Canada: Small plane, good leg room, poor entertainment options, standard food.
  • Molson Canadian Premium Lager: For a premium brew, it lacks taste, but not too bad overall.
  • Scott Pilgrim: Rating: Awesome. You should all get it, lest ye die horrible deaths. I must get more volumes.
  • Transiting through the USA: Annoying but painless. The hassle kind of makes me want to avoid going through this way to another country again.
  • Unsecured wireless networks in Honolulu airport: None that you don't have to pay for. Lame.

(about half a day and lots of stress later)

Delay-o-rama

Ok, so things didn't quite go to schedule today. It all started when the flight from Sydney left about half an hour later than it was scheduled to. This meant that it arrived somewhat late in Honolulu. The Honolulu flight would have left in time, were it not for two of the passengers being held up at US immigration. So anyway, the flight left late and thus arrived late in Vancouver. This was made worse by the fact that Vancouver was hit with a snowstorm the day before, so it took about 10 minutes to taxi to the terminal.

At this point, I was completely stressing out because I needed to get my working holiday visa from immigration then transfer my bags over to the domestic carousel. I then had to run all the way to the domestic terminal, where it seemed many people were late for their flights. Flights ended up being delayed anyway, due to the snow cover on the tarmac. Our flight was held up about an hour and 45 minutes while runway was being cleared. Understandably, some people on the flight were annoyed that weren't going to be able to make it to wherever by whenever.

So anyway, we finally arrived in Calgary, and it was -20 degrees Celsius. And that's the high for the day. But more on that later, because the delays don't end there. It took a long while to get the baggage from our flight into the carousel in Calgary Airport. They kept changing the carrousel number in which it was supposedly coming out of. With that all done, and me all drained, it was time to make my way to the hostel. Thankfully the airport shuttle people were helpful with my airport transfer to the HI Calgary, where I'll be staying for the next 5 days. But guess what? The shuttle... delayed!

The cold open

I eventually got to the warmth of the hostel, where I promptly embraced the glow of the information superhighway. I then had to get food. In the negative 20s. It was a horrible walk, consisting of two false starts when I got lost and didn't have money, respectively, and finally reaching the only open restaurant in many many blocks - the world-renowned golden arches. The receptionist at the hostel gave me a 2-for-1 Big Mac voucher, so I used that.

It was about as terrible as it is anywhere else in the world, but I forced myself to ignore this fact as I was both incredibly hungry and quite poor, Canadian dollar-wise. I didn't exchange any American dollars at the airport because they were exchanging for 1.05 Canadian dollars for every American, plus a $3 processing fee, where it should be getting at least 1.10. Anyway, the airport didn't have them, and Sunday seemed to be very dead, business-wise, so I was stuck with my CAD 9.36, of which 1 I gave to the nice shuttle bus driver as a tip (as I gotta start getting used to tipping when required).

On the way back from McDonald's, I discovered the wonders of free public transport. I didn't feel like walking the long walk home in the cold snow (which, by the way, hurt my face) so I took the free tram that ran on the avenue that my hostel was situated. It didn't stop right in front but it's still pretty damn useful nonetheless. I have a feeling I'll be using it whenever I decide to step outside into the ridiculous cold snap (which apparently stops on Thursday, where it's back to a warm -2). The way things are going, I'll probably try to stay inside except for when I eat, get money exchanged, or buy snowboard-related goods.

Anyway, that was a pretty long post and it's been a pretty long day. I sneaked in about an hour or two of sleep during the past 24+ hours, so I'll go and quietly retire into my top bunk hostel bed to prepare myself for another day of adventures.

Saturday, November 25, 2006

Next year

I'm scared as hell. Not a lot of people seem to consider that. When I tell people that I'm going overseas for a year and going (mostly) by myself, they usually reply by saying that I must be brave to do that. That's not really the case. Only a few people realize that not only am I excited about going, but I'm also pretty damn nervous. This is the longest time I'll be away from home, and the first time that I'll be traveling alone outside of the country, so it's only natural that I'm at least a little scared. Don't get me wrong though, I'm very much looking forward to the challenge and the experience.

Anyway, I think I shall designate this as the first official post of the Canadian edition of this blog. I know I'm not in Canada yet, but this is my last post before I leave for my great adventure, and I'm not 100% sure that I'll get to be on the net any time soon. The hostel I'm staying at is meant to have free Wi-Fi, but you never really know. I leave tomorrow (Sunday) morning and arrive in Canada about 2 hours later... if you ignore time zone difference. The travel time actually adds up to about 20 hours, so I hope I get some sleep on the flight, or at least get to watch some movies. I had a look at the list of movies showing this month, and it's not looking too great. I've either seen them, or they're not very good, or both.

This entire week has been pretty intense. It kicked off last Saturday when I had a going away party at Steve and James' place. It also happened to be Nick N's birthday party. A good time was had by all. The people at pub trivia saw me off on the Tuesday. We didn't win, but it was as fun as always. Thursday was probably the biggest night. I had a farewell dinner with about 13 other people at the Belgian Beer Cafe. Great food and drink. I ended up rather hung over yesterday morning.

Throughout all of this, I've been scrambling around, trying to get my computer files in order, and also double-, triple-, and quadruple-checking things that I need to bring to Canada. I'm actually writing this as I take a break from the crazy last-minute thing that inevitably happens before a big trip. I just know I'll still be at it tomorrow as I watch Australia beat up on England some more on the cricket. This final day shall be interesting indeed.

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

New layout

I decided to change the layout of the blog. This is mainly due to the fact that I was feeling creative at the time. Due to my rusty web design skills, I didn't try to make it too complicated. Basically, I just switched templates and messed around with the header. You may notice that it already says "Canadian edition". The reason for this is that I am too lazy to come up with 2 new header images, so I decided to just upload the Canadian one in advance. If you think it looks like a load of crap, let me know.

Sunday, November 12, 2006

Adrian's thought of the day, vol. 2

Why do people use the term 'meteoric rise'? Meteors fall. Do these people come from some bizarro planet where the laws of physics do not apply, and meteors do in fact rise? Perhaps the term would apply to a rise so abysmal that only a falling object can be used to describe it.

Think about it.

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Play that funky music

Last week, I took a little trip to the north-western suburbs of Sydney to record a few vocals for Morgan's band, River of Bass. If you have never heard of them (which is more than likely), they're an electronica duo, and they do really good stuff. Anyway, it was a pretty cool day. It was the first time I had ever recorded stuff with proper equipment, and it gave me a lot of insight on how songs (especially electronica songs with vocals) are constructed. The album that I did vocals for, called Accidents Mistakes Happenstance Fate is coming along really well. I'm very much looking forward to the final product.

Last night, I went to see Pearl Jam. It was an incredible night. They played lots of their old stuff, with the majority of the songs they played coming from their first three albums (Ten, Vs., and Vitalogy). They didn't even play any songs from No Code or Riot Act, and only a single song from Binaural, which is my favourite album, so that was kind of a shame. That didn't take away from the quality of the show though. They started off with Release, which got everybody immediately pumped up. They didn't relent, as they followed that up with Rearviewmirror. Overall, the gig was all about the old school, and I suspect that tonight's show might be more skewed towards their later songs.

Apparently Pearl Jam weren't entertaining enough though, as a few of the people sitting next to me decided to leave at the first encore break. It was their loss, as they missed an amazing sequence of songs that lead to the end of the show, including Black, a perennial fan favourite. The boys eventually finished off with a Neil Young song, Keep on Rockin' in the Free World. It was a fittingly rocking ending to a very rocking show.

Sadly enough, I'm not going to tonight's show, or their third and final Sydney show in a week and a half, as I am saving up money for my trip. Last night was probably my last concert of the year, though I'm hoping to catch some bands over in the USA and Canada, especially those that never tour here.