Changes and more changes

Big new changes to report this time.

Firstly, this blog has finally been upgraded to new Blogger. It was in beta for ages but the scrooges at Google wouldn't let me use it. Now it is rolled out to everyone. This page probably doesn't look too different yet, though my disclaimer is now a little tidier :) I'll probably be adding some more content to pretty up the page over the next few months, as it is now a whole lot easier for me to do. Thanks Blogger!

Secondly, our new home for photos on Flickr is now semi-operational. You can find it here. There are three sets of never-before seen photos for you to check out:

Hannah, Gavin and Grace visit
Steph's aunts visit
Our Secret Santa party

Over the next few months I'll be migrating all of our older photo albums over to Flickr, before the old .Mac website expires in April. Hopefully viewing our photos on Flickr will be faster and more pleasant for everybody, and now you can post comments too!

That's it for now. Isn't that enough? Oh yes, and we are flying back to England on Saturday for Christmas. Look out family and friends - here we come! Woohoo!

Amos Lee

Last night we went to the Commodore Ballroom to see Amos Lee. You've probably never heard of him, and neither had I until recently. I actually came across one of his songs on an episode of ER, and ended up getting his debut album which was excellent. Now he has a new album and is touring.

I expected him to come on in a jazz hat and a suit and do some blues, but in fact the gig was much more varied than that. There was no jazz hat either - he was very casual but definitely charismatic. The gig really showed the musical variety in his songs, emphasized by some of the live arrangements which were different to what I'd heard on the album. There was a strong funk vibe throughout, but his songs ranged from blues to soul to rock to reggae, and even a bit of bluegrass and a 10-minute jam session! Amos's voice was on top form and sounded great, and his band were talented musicians who made it all look easy. Seems like most of his audience are young women, and there was much screaming and squealing, plus a good deal of singing along. Nice to be in a crowd so appreciative. We'll be buying his new album for sure.

In other news, we've been having a fair few Christmas parties! There was the Radical work party on Friday 1st which was great - lots of chatting and free booze. Then we had a Christmas dinner the next day round a friend's which was cool. Then last Friday (9th) was my team Christmas party at work (more chatting and free booze), and then on the Saturday (10th) Steph and I had a secret santa party at our place. We had a really good time and I think everyone else did too. The presents were a lot of fun, including a couple of nerf guns, an electronic voice changer and a life-size inflatable Spiderman. No end to the things you can do with that. There will be a few pictures coming - apologies for no photos as late, but I am working on moving our photo hosting from .Mac (poo) to Flickr (yay). No idea on the ETA yet - maybe after Christmas.

Talking of Christmas - not long now before we fly home! We are both looking forward to seeing our families plus a few of our friends :)

The water is back

Woohoo. The boil-water advisory was lifted yesterday. It is still a little queer-looking, so we're going to drink bottled water for a few more days. No more boiling our washing-up water though - that was getting pretty annoying.

We got up yesterday to a good deal of snow. Steph took a bunch of pictures, like the one to the right. Christmas has arrived early! The snow is still around today, and tomorrow there is more snow forecast. The weather is going to warm up towards the end of the week though.

Tonight we are going to our first ice hockey game. I expect I probably won't have any idea what's going on, but it should be fun. Must remember to cheer for the Vancouver Canucks, or I might get duffed up :)

Snow (and other things)

It started to snow yesterday, and it is snowing today too - quite heavily at the moment. Check out the webcam picture opposite. The forecast is for snow until at least Tuesday I think. It is a lot colder than it was last year at this time. A high pressure front means not too much rain though, which is nice.

Steph and I went to see Casino Royale with some friends last Sunday. We all really enjoyed it. I thought it was the best Bond film in ages. Some of the action sequences are awesome, and Daniel Craig seemed to fit the role really well. It was a little too long, and had its moments of silliness, but overall it was a great movie. Recommended!

We are still having to boil our water at the moment. It's improved in quality since last weekend but is still some way off being good enough to drink. I expect the boil water advisory won't be lifted for another week at least. We are getting used to relying on bottled water now, although washing up is still a major pain - boiling enough water to fill the sink is a time-consuming process :/

Last night we went out for drinks for a friend's birthday. We then went 5-pin bowling. It was similar to modern 10-pin bowling that I have done before, but there are only 5 pins (obviously) and the balls are much smaller - small enough to grip in one hand. It was pretty low-tech - the pins themselves were on strings that reset them, and there was no electronic scoreboard. You had to puzzle it out for yourself which isn't easy when you're a little tipsy. It was all very quaint and old-fashioned :) I think everyone enjoyed it though (there were nearly 20 people there altogether) and Steph and I would like to do it again some time.

Don't drink the water...

So on Thursday we were showering and noticed that the water was a nasty brown colour, and smelled of dirt. We figured it was a problem with our apartment block, and would have spoken to our building manager that morning but they were not around. Anyway, when we got to work we found out that the dirty water had another cause. Apparently, torrential rains flowing into Vancouver's fresh water reservoirs have stirred up tonnes of sediment, leading to the nasty water quality. The health authorities have issued a Boil-Water Advisory, which means we have to use bottled water or boil it for at least a minute. As it is so full of dirt, you wouldn't really want to drink the water even after its boiled.

So its Saturday now and the water is looking slightly better, but not much. I've no idea how long this is going to go on for, but believe me washing up our pots has become an epic operation that takes several hours :/

One interesting thing I discovered on Friday - canned drinks don't do much good for you. Normally I drink pure water all the time, but on Friday I had to drink canned juice drinks and so forth. By the middle of the afternoon I had drunk about 5, and was still dry. That can't be right.

Ray sings (and speaks!)

On Thursday (November 16th) we went to see Ray LaMontagne at the Centre for Performing Arts. We saw him once before at Shepherd's Bush Empire in London and he was great then. This time I think he might have been even better. The sound quality at the venue was great, and we had good seats too. Ray's voice was amazing as always. He played a mixture of his most popular songs from his first album, and tracks from his new album too. We were totally absorbed in every song. Initially I thought he was going to be painfully shy as always, but he actually spent a little while talking to the audience this time, which was cool. He was quite a funny guy when he got going. The crowd appreciated his music too, and gave him a standing ovation at the end. Superb. We've vowed never to miss an opportunity to go see him.

Happy 3rd anniversary to us

Wednesday (November 15th) was our third anniversary - go us! Steph and I went for food in the evening to celebrate. We tried a restaurant called Chambar which was excellent - not too pricey and the food was great.

It's been a fantastic year in Canada and we are both looking forward to the next one!

Happy Halloween, and goodbye wisdom teeth!

Yes, while everyone else has been celebrating Satan, or whatever Halloween actually means, I chose to have my two lower wisdom teeth removed. At least I thought I could save having to dress up - instead I'll just wander around with blood dripping out of my mouth.

I was delighted to say though that I'm in no fit state to scare anybody. I was very nervous this morning at 9am when I went to the dentist, mainly about the fact that I was having a general anaesthetic. I hate being knocked out during operations - I'd rather have a local and see what is going on so I know the job is getting done right! Anyway, they knocked me out and I woke up about an hour later and apart from the wobbles I felt pretty good. Steph came to take me home and then went out to get all my drugs. She's so good to me :)

So I've popped my antibiotics and my anti-inflammatories and this afternoon I even had a painkiller, but frankly I could have done with out it as apart from some aching in the sockets I haven't had any pain. It all just seems too easy! I'm an eternal pessimist so I'm still waiting for the hammer to fall (as Queen once said) - maybe tomorrow it will catch up with me!

flOw (a cool little life game)

I was browsing the latest previews on GameSpot the other day and found a game called flOw that is being developed as one of the first games that will be available for download on PlayStation 3. It is being developed by That Game Company, but it turns out that you can already play the game as there is a Flash version online. And it is rather good. Check it out here.

Happy 1st Canada anniversary to us :)

It's been a while since I posted, so I'll try to catch up with what's been happening.

Last Thursday (21st September) we went to see Snow Patrol perform at the PNE Forum. Getting there was interesting, as we had to catch a Hastings St. bus. Hastings is about the dodgiest street in Vancouver and a focal point for drug use and physical attacks. Nice. The venue itself looked like a disused sports hall of some sort, but it was spacious and not too hot. So let's get to Snow Patrol themselves. They performed pretty well, and the lead singer had plenty of energy. What was a big let down for me was the sound. It was the worst I had ever heard at a gig. The guitars broke up into white noise at any kind of volume, and the bass was awful. The speakers could produce bass, but only at one muddy frequency, so bass chord changes all sounded exactly the same. It was like watching a gig while a convoy of trucks was driving by. I found myself having to imagine in my head what the songs should have sounded like in order to enjoy them. Grrr.

We had visitors too for a couple of weeks - Gavin and Hannah and their little baby Grace. They left last Saturday. It was nice to have people staying again - our last visitors were in May/June. We hung out with them when we could, including a trip up Grouse Mountain. Grace is very cute, and a fast crawler so we had to be ready to grab her at any time when she went for something expensive! Our lounge isn't really baby-proof. There could be a few photos to come from their visit, when I get round to sorting them out.

Yesterday - September 29th - was our first anniversary of arriving in Canada. It should have been the 27th but thanks to Air Canada we ended up arriving two days late. The year has passed by pretty quickly for us, but it has been a great time. When we first arrived we had to endure Winter in Vancouver, and one of the wettest on record at that. It did put us off a little at first. We got to enjoy some winter sports though which was cool, especially for Steph who loves to ski. Last December we moved into the apartment that we live in now, which we still love. Lots of space, a nice quiet area, great views - it's perfect really. Then the summer arrived and we really started to get out and around. We've packed in quite a few trips in the last few months, as you can see if you look back through this blog. I think I have enjoyed this summer more than any I can remember. There is just tons of stuff to do in British Columbia. It will keep us busy for a while yet :)

Today we were planning some kayaking and walking at Deep Cove with friends (which is at the base of Seymour Mountain),. Unfortunately, the weather is crap right now - foggy and grey. So that's probably off and it will be a lazy day instead. We are going out for a meal tonight to celebrate the anniversary - a nice restaurant called Brix in Downtown. Looking forward to it, and to the next 12 months in Canada. So far so good for this life adventure :)