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.