$1.86

That's how much I owe the company after rent was taken out of my last pay. It could have been a lot worse, I guess. It's still a bit annoying though.

Earlier in the week there was a staff trip to Kimberley, another nearby resort. We were lucky enough to catch it on a powder day. Unfortunately, I had, in the previous day, accidentally left my board and gear at the office. Consequently, I was riding with Jacky's board and boots all day, which felt a bit weird.

Yesterday saw a massive party at Paradise as the Aussies (and a few non-Aussies too) listened to the Triple J Hottest 100. It was a grand time, matched only by the BBQ today, followed by beers at the summit. As the new batch of photos will reveal, we hoisted the Australian flag up at the summit and generally had a ball.

That's it for now. I'm about to go to an Australia Day party at the Crazy Horse. Hopefully it'll be good, though I won't drink a great deal due to aforementioned money issues and work tomorrow.

Ain't nothin' goin' on but the rent

Well, after (somewhat) recovering from that illness that I had last week, I found myself in the unfortunate position of having 3 out of my 4 days at work with very little to do. I didn't work a great deal of hours, and I'm unsure on whether or not I'll make enough to cover rent.

One of the better things to come out of this week is my new guitar. It's a 1/2 size acoustic guitar that I got from eBay for about 40 bucks, and it's great to finally be able to play some songs in my spare time.

Dave called me the other night to catch up a bit. I was half asleep when the phone rang but couldn't sleep after the call after finding out that a good mate's sister had recently passed away. It's that kind of news that you don't want to hear, especially when you're overseas. You feel so helpless when all you can do is make a phone call and see how they're going.

New photos!

Yay.

The Internet is still as slow as ever in our building, but thankfully, it's working perfectly in our sister building, Paradise (FYI, our building is called Monument), so I've taken the liberty of uploading some photos with their connection. As always, they can be found at this location. Here's one I prepared earlier...

You're probably wondering one of two things right about now: 1) What the hell is he wearing? and; 2) What the hell is that thing next to him?

First, let's go into the story of the suit. I bought this suit waaaay back at the start of the season. It was the week leading up to the '80s theme party, and I desperately wanted to find some really cheesy '80s style fluro ski suit. Out of sheer luck, I found a proper heli-skiing one-piece suit at just about my size at the children's consignment store for a very reasonable $25. I picked it up without hesitation and was quite pleased when I found out it was actually quite a warm and waterproof outfit. In fact, it's a bit warmer than the ski jacket that I brought with me. It's also good for riding in powder because you don't get any snow down your pants (because it's a one-piece). I've been wearing it more than my normal ski gear due to the amount of powder we've been getting.

Now the deal with the wolf in the Santa suit is a bit more straightforward. This was on Christmas Eve when I went riding for a bit in the morning then headed down to the village to chill out for a bit. I found out that Santa was going to be around, and ran into this mascot walking about. I just had to get a photo with it. It turned out there was an actual human Santa as well, but that wasn't nearly as fun as the costumed wolf Santa.

I called in sick again today. I worked yesterday but didn't feel the greatest and couldn't really get a lot done, so when I woke up today, feeling a bit better but still not the best, I decided not to risk overexerting myself for another day and just took the day off. I'm hoping I'll recover over the weekend. I guess I'll just have to pay for rent out of my pocket for the next pay period. The good news is that I got about $360 today (pay day), so I have a tad bit of wiggle room for the next bunch of weeks, as long as I don't splurge too much.

Crazy days and lazy days

It's been more than 2 weeks since my last post, which is probably due to the craziness of the past few weeks. Work has been really busy, and in between work were New Year's celebrations. My first day off for the week was Saturday, and I spent that snowboarding and generally being lazy.

Work has been okay lately. It's been really busy, and I've been really slow, but I'm told it's better to be slow and get everything done than cutting corners to be quick. It's not earning me a lot of dollars, but it's not too bad. Still, I wouldn't mind getting a different position.

Snowboarding-wise, I haven't really gone too often lately, mainly because the resort has been pretty busy, and it's not really worth it to go out a lot unless it's a powder day. I've been trying to cover much of the resort's runs so that I could claim I've done all of the runs by the end of the season. It's looking pretty good so far, but there's still a fair bit to go.

My other mission is to visit as many other resorts as possible. That started on Tuesday, when I went on the staff trip to Lake Louise. The trip wasn't as great as I would have hoped, mainly due to the fact that I've been feeling pretty sick lately. I had almost no energy during the trip and only managed to go up 3 times before giving up. On the plus side, I did have some incredibly tasty (albeit incredibly pricey) prime rib burger.

At the end of the day I had worked up quite a fever and ended up calling in sick today, although half of the reason why I called in sick was because of a temporary limp I had acquired from playing in the staff broomball league. Broomball is a game that is pretty much a bastard child of field hockey, ice hockey, and football (aka soccer). It is played, oddly enough, with brooms and a ball. Similar to ice hockey, you can bat the ball down with you hand, but only the goalie is allowed to grab the ball. Like football, you can kick the ball, but you can only score by using the broom.

Anyway, a teammate and I, and a player from the other side, were all going for the ball. My teammate accidentally hit me square in the calf, and it's literally been a pain to walk ever since. I still have a bit of a limp, but I'll probably go to work tomorrow since I only have 2 working days left (requested the Lake Louise day off and had today off sick), and I want to make rent for the next pay period.

Despite the minor misfortunes of late, it had just recently hit me that I am living in a beautiful and friendly mountain village where I get to snowboard often and am surrounded by great people. Life is good.

Photos may be delayed for a bit longer, since the Internet connection seems to be moving along at a snail's pace lately. It really sucks not having admin or physical access to the router to be able to mess around with settings and whatnot. I'm just mooching off the other staff building's net connection at the moment.

Oh yeah, I hope everybody had a great Christmas holiday period and a safe New Year.

Best. Christmas. Ever.

The double black Christmas thing didn't exactly go to plan, but the good thing was that it was a powder day (15cm new snow) and we got some pretty damn good runs down.

Last night was a massive Christmas celebration at the apartment building. Many people brought down food and everybody had a massive feast. After dinner, gifts were given out as part of a Secret Santa thing that almost the entire building was part of. Anj dressed up as Santa and gave away gifts from everybody to everybody. I got season 2 of Alf on DVD, which was pretty sweet.

I didn't have too much to drink because our beer supply ran out, which turned out to be a good thing because when I woke up on Christmas morning, Santa had given the second best present I could hope for (next to Alf, naturally) - powder. I turned on the TV when I woke up and lo and behold, there was 15cm of fresh powder to be ridden. It was my first ever white Christmas, and the entire day of riding was just incredible, despite a few times when I got a bit buried in powder.

The day was actually full of incidents. Leigh took out a tree (and didn't damage his board), Ben did a few flips due to a crash, and John and I fell into a crevasse in the middle of a run. We ended up calling it a day at about 2:30 in the afternoon because we were all pretty damn tired.

We came home to find the common room completely covered in food scraps. It was nasty. Apparently there was a food fight last night after I had gone to sleep. Hopefully tonight will be another good night, as I have 4 straight days of work to look forward to, and at least two of those are predicted to be powder days.

Photos will be up as soon as I can be bothered to upload them.

I'm dreaming of a double black Christmas

There's a plan going around that involves doing as much of Taynton Bowl as possible on Christmas Day. Taynton Bowl is an expert area of the mountain filled with powdery (or one would hope) double black diamond runs. Interesting times should be had.

On a slightly tangential note, I did my first ever double black run the other day. I took on Elmo at the Extreme Dream Zone (another double black area). Apart from the time when my board hit an exposed tree stump and received some big scratches, it was a pretty good experience (and at the same time told me that I need to improve on those kind of runs).

The view from the summit

Apart from one or two riding days, the week involved mostly work and a whole lot of not much else. The most interesting point was when the lifties were out for a quiet drink, which eventually turned into 4 guys buying large rounds of Jager Bombs for everybody (I think it cost them $122 Canadian each for those rounds). Good times.

Anyway, as this is probably my last post before Christmas (Canadian time), I would like to wish everybody a happy and safe holidays.

Christmas tree!

View of a thousand peaks

Today, we took the run aptly named 'View of 1000 Peaks'. It was quite a beautiful view, though not as breathtaking as the one I witnessed in Innsbruck. Nothing beats the Austrian alps. The run it linked up with was filled with moguls and took us some time to get through. It wasn't a whole lot of fun, but it did improve my skills on those kind of runs.

Last night was jam night again. It was a great celebration of Andy's birthday. He got well drunk, as did a lot of other people. I stayed fairly sober so that I could get up and sing again (and not screw up). I sang Everlong (with somebody else on guitars), and it was fairly well-received. The whole getting up on stage thing is something I could get used to. I believe the next jam night is on New Year's Day, so I have a couple of weeks to practice something new.

Embrace the sun

The Sun Bowl opened up yesterday. The Sun Bowl is a massive area (a bowl to be specific) in Panorama that's not too steep and can get some insane powder. Alas, I was too busy either teaching Kelly how to ride, or going to Invermere to do some shopping, so I missed out on first tracks there.

The sun was shining brilliantly yesterday

Fortunately, it was still good today, and I had an awesome time riding some pretty sweet powder. The groomed runs were also quite good and I got some huge speed down a few of them. I think today was actually my first full day of boarding since I got here. Good to know I can last a day of hard work. The worst part of the day is a toss-up between when I left my lift pass at the apartment in the morning (and had to walk back and get it) or when I crashed on a traverse (after trying to come back from the powder on the side) and landed on my back, smacking me squarely on the back of the head (I feel fine now, though). Methinks I should invest in a helmet. And some warmer gloves, my hands were freezing today.

A few freshies

Last night was the pirate theme weekend party. A lot of creative costumes were spotted. Gordon (aka Nugget - Sydney-sider) was all decked out in pirate gear (see below), but I think he was topped by the guys (whose names I can't remember right now) who showed up in a cardboard pirate ship. At the party I saw Pete, who runs the jam nights, and he said I should get up again tomorrow night. We'll see.

Swashbuckling Nugget

Powder keg

Today, I woke up early to catch the first lifts up to the summit of the mountain. It was knee-deep powder up there, after a 25cm dump in the past 24 hours. It's pretty crazy that the base at the summit is already at 110cm after only one open week. It was without a doubt the biggest powder I've ever ridden in.

Last night was the staff Christmas party, and it wasn't as wild as it could have been. The good thing was that the food was free (nice and tasty turkey and ham) and you got two free drinks. There was also a prize draw. A beginner (Nat) won a heli-skiing adventure day, and a skier won a snowboard. It was pretty amusing.

Photographic goodness

All the (decent) photos from the trip so far can be found here.

Panorama

That's right, folks... I'm still alive.

The following post covers the past Internetless week or so.

I write this as we make our way to Panorama via the company bus. It's been pretty cool driving through Banff National Park, though we didn't go past Lake Louise. I'll have to check it out some other time in the future.

Yesterday, I had a leisurely stroll over to the comic book store as it was no longer really really cold. It was a nice and comfortable -4 or so. I grabbed Scott Pilgrim vol. 2. It was a shame that they didn't have vol. 3 in because there was a sale for manga and digest-sized graphic novels - buy one, get the second at 25% off.

I took a side-trip over to the mall to get a SIM card for my phone. It must be noted that the prices for mobiles here are crazy. Not so much the price of the actual phone but rather the charges for calls. Here you get charged for airtime, so even receiving calls gets billed. You also have to pay for 'extras' that are stock standard for most networks in Australia, such as text messaging, voice messaging, caller ID, etc. In summary, Australia's awesomeness should not be taken for granted.

Anyway, after that whole phone stuff, I headed back to the hostel and waited for Leigh and Ben to arrive. We hung around a bit then went to the store to buy my snowboard boots. I ended up going with the Burton Hail. Not cheap, but incredibly comfortable, and having comfy boots is one of the most important things when snowboarding.

The train station

After dinner, a fair portion of the people from the hostel went to Cowboy's, where they have 25c beers on Thursday nights. Needless to say, it was packed. Everybody got pretty damn drunk and woke up this morning feeling horrible. Regardless, all the Panorama folk were ready for the bus, which left just about on time.

No net access makes Adrian something something...

On the way to Panorama, the bus driver noticed that the staff bus had been stranded on the side of the road. He dropped us off at central check-in and headed back to pick up the staff, leaving everybody without their luggage for about half an hour. When we finally got to our apartment, everybody was very hungry.

A nice view on the way to Panorama

After a short talk from the staff, mostly everybody headed over to the Crazy Horse for some meals and drinks. Myself, Leigh, and Anj (Melbournian) stayed to play pool and have drinks while the others left. I ended up drinking far too much and felt rather hungover this morning. Leigh and I still somehow managed to give our boards a wax in the early hours of the morning after getting back, which wasn't really too useful since it wasn't a low temperature wax and sucked in these conditions.

Ben, Christel (Canberran), John and Kelly (Kiwis) bought some food supplies for us in Invermere while we slept, so there was finally something to eat around the house. We had a quick feed then headed to the lifts because it was staff skiing day. I finally got to try out my new gear. Pretty damn good. The boots are amazingly comfy.

I had two runs down before they stopped letting staff through (since the hill is primarily used for ski racing training), of which one involved a rather spectacular crash, leaving a big scratch on my chin and a lot of snow in my clothes. Regardless, it was fun to be on the snow again. Afterwards, Christel, Jackie (I actually can't recall where she's from at the moment), and I went to get our staff passes.

On the way back to the apartment, we took a different route, and fearing that we'd get lost, Christel and Jackie backtracked to the way they knew. I kept going knowing that I would eventually find the way home, and quite confident that I wouldn't get lost. I did. I took one wrong turn and ended up at central check-in. I still got home before Christel and Jackie though.

By the way, we have discovered that the free Internet in our rooms does not work as of yet, so this post may end up being pretty large. It's really a bit annoying, but hopefully we'll be in business soon enough.

Tonight is apparently a massive staff party at the Crazy Horse, so it should be pretty fun. I hope the guys get back from town soon because I don't wanna be heading over there by myself.

The good times are killing me

Dinner was great. Ben's a cook, so that's always nice to have in an apartment. About 8 of us from the same floor surrounded the insufficiently-sized bench top for a pasta feed. The staff housing, by the way, is set up rather nicely. It's pretty small but certainly spacious enough. My only gripe is that there is virtually no soundproofing, so you can hear the smallest things.

My room

After dinner, a big group of people from the apartment headed over to the Crazy Horse for the big staff party. There were drinks all around, a cover band (who played some songs badly and some songs pretty well), and lots of mingling. I met a lot of people, most of whose names I have already forgotten. I'm really bad with that kind of thing. It was a lot of fun though.

I was not planning on having a big night because it would have been my third in a row, and I have orientation in the morning. Alas, as the story usually goes, I had a pretty big one. Fortunately, it wasn't as bad as the past two nights. My throat still hurts like hell (probably from singing along to Everlong when the band played it), but I can remember most of the night, which is a good sign.

Toby Creek

I'm hoping that orientation doesn't take too long. I need a bit of a rest, and I'd like to get some shopping done down in town (the colloquial term for Invermere). The apartment is in dire need of rice, a rice cooker, soy sauce, and a wok. A little meat would go a long way too. Sadly, I hear that meat here costs a lot, so I might not buy as much as I would hope to get. Still, I do need to use up all that bihon (noodles) that I bought back in Calgary. In hindsight, it seems like it may have been a bad idea to buy so much of it.

The Sunday roast

Half the new people had staff orientation the day after the big party. Most were feeling under the weather during the speeches, but it was a pretty interesting day. It pretty much introduced people to the company and their values, and told us what kind of benefits we'd be getting. After orientation, I headed home and decided I'd have an easy night so I can be fresh for my first day.

The view outside my room

The 2nd floor community decided to roast a turkey, which turned out rather tasty, despite not having any gravy. During the roasting period, the fire alarm went off no less than five times, which led us to believe that it is a rather sensitive alarm. I called it a night early but couldn't find a good run of sleep and woke up for my first day pretty tired.

Work was pretty interesting. We were introduced to the department, how they operate, and were shown around the resort so that we would all know the different buildings. At the end of the day, I pretty much had the layout of the resort down pat.

Last night was fun. We had roast leftovers for dinner, and headed out for John's birthday. We first hit the Jack Pine Pub and soon moved over to the Crazy Horse. Some people left pretty early because they were starting work today, but a few stayed. Fortunately for me, I was one of them, because some random guy was buying rounds of Jager Bombs for everybody. I hear it ended up costing him more than 700 dollars. Ouch.

After the pub, Ian and Gary (Poms), and Kelly and I started to head home. However, I had the grand idea to start throwing snow at people, and it escalated into a snow fight of epic proportions. We all ended up very white from snow and I had a bruised knee. Kelly and I took a short pit stop at the place where the Brits were staying, then headed back to the apartment.

Today, I woke up early and went to Invermere with Vi and Alex (Melbournians) to do some shopping. I ended up getting some useful stuff like soy sauce and a deep frying pan to use as a makeshift wok (since I couldn't find any woks around town). I also bought my costume for the opening week theme, which is The '80s. I got a pink headwarmer and a one-piece ski jumpsuit. Looks very old school.

After grabbing groceries, Vi and Alex realised that they had bought too much. As a result, we ended up having to ring up Mallory (a local) to bring some of the things up for us while we hitchhike up the mountain (which is pretty safe at this time of year because it's only employees that are heading up to Panorama). Becky (another local) drove around and got our stuff then we headed up to the hitchhike point. A nice local named Catrien picked us up in her Golf and we got home before too long.

When I got home I got the Internet working for a brief moment, but it seems to keep dropping out, which is pretty annoying. I really hope they fix that soon.

All the dirty work

When I signed up to be a room attendant, I thought it would be rather cruisy. Not so, it seems. The first few days at work have been pretty hard, and I'm hoping I will soon get the knack of cleaning rooms. Apart from that, it's been pretty much all party. The village has this great atmosphere where everybody has a lot of fun, and I'm glad to be part of it.

This weekend is opening weekend so it's starting to get a lot more lively, with all the people from out of town coming up for the snow. The '80s fashion showoff was really fun. John (from next door) won with his incredible skin-tight fluro purple ski outfit.

That outfit

The net is still not working, which is annoying the hell out of me, but not enough to make my time here a bad one.

Tonight should be a massive party over at Chopper's Landing, carrying on the '80s theme. I'm a bit tired after work and a bit of riding, but I'll tought it out. I got out of work early today, so I decided to hit the slope for a run or two, but the visibility was horrible, so I decided to give up after one run.

Opening weekend

Apparently it was the best opening weekend Panorama has seen in several years. The base was pretty good, but not all the runs were open. That said, for an opening weekend the conditions were pretty damn good. It's about what Thredbo can produce at its peak on the average 'good' season.

Enough about the snow though, and more about the partying. The '80s night at Chopper's Landing was pretty wild. We first hit the Crazy Horse before the big party started. It was pretty busy there already. A few of us hitched a very short ride over to Chopper's landing with a guy more than willing to show us a good set of icy doughnuts in the parking lot. That was a lot of fun. There was an '80s cover band at Chopper's pumping out a lot of tunes, and a lot of people were enjoying themselves despite the slow service on the alcohol.

The day after was not spent recovering, but rather, it was spent snowboarding. I went up 2 lifts and did some pretty steep runs. I started to get my groove back but was also getting rather tired, so I didn't ending up going again too many times. At the end of the day, I was feeling sore, and ended up sleeping at about 8:30.

Nothing like a good view heading up the slopes

The next day at work was pretty relaxed, and it was a good lead-up to the first jam night of the season, which are held every Monday night. I did a fair bit of pre-drinking, and got on stage rather drunkenly. My attempt at singing Good Riddance was impaired by several breaks when I either forgot the lyrics or chords, or both. It was, however, not such a bad experience considering it was my first time on stage in front of a live audience. A lot of the other (also drunken) people were very supportive, so that was cool.

The Internet has finally started to work today, so I'm very happy about that. Apologies for the ultra-long post.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The final countdown

*cue Europe song of the same title*

Right now it's about 31 days, 8 hours, and 30 minutes away until I leave for Canada. I've even got a Yahoo! Widget telling me how many days, hours, minutes, and seconds I have left until I go on my merry way. If you rewind half a year, I don't think I was even seriously considering this, and now I'm barely over a month away from setting off on a year-long adventure.

Now that I've left work, I have a feeling time's just going to fly past in this next month and before I know it I'll be on that plane, enjoying the free beer and watching movies in 4:3. Leaving work felt good. It feels good to know that I have some time to relax for once, to know that, as much as I loved the people I worked with, I don't have to go back to working there. My last day was pretty interesting - they put me in a department where I hadn't worked before. This effectively meant that on my last day, it felt like my first day. But that's all done and dusted now, and it's time for some celebrations.

However, I couldn't really celebrate my resignation in typical Adrian fashion (that is, by having a few cold ones) because I'm currently on antibiotics that, from what I've been told and have researched on the internet, react quite badly with alcohol. This is a direct result of the fact that my dental health regime sucked during high school and university, and now I'm paying for it with bad gums. So, the dentist (who had quite an attractive assistant, but I digress) prescribed me some antibiotics to reduce the inflammation of my gums. They've worked pretty well so far, but I think all those years have really screwed the gums up and it's going to take some time to 'fix'.

Anyway, the celebrations will probably commence in about three weeks with a couple of events - a farewell party with my friends from Wollongong, and a farewell dinner with my friends from Sydney. The latter is taking place mainly for the fact that the venue - the Belgian Beer Cafe - has some incredible beer.

Also ahead in about three weeks is my final night of trivia at the local pub. That trivia night might also be the next time I'll actually have a chance to go, since my team is going to be AWOL for the next few weeks. One of them had a heart attack, and I sincerely hope he gets better. Another has a few busy Tuesdays coming up. Couple that with the fact that it's Melbourne Cup Day in two Tuesdays (which is, incidentally, when I'll be in Sydney seeing Pearl Jam anyway) and it's looking like I have just one trivia night left. I'm going to miss it. It's a lot of fun with some nice locals.