The loveliest day

Yesterday was amazing. It consisted of me for the first time in ages being movitaved enough to do something creative of my own accord. I’m beginning to decorate these shorts I bought from an op shop to replicate ones I saw in Japan but was being too much of a tight arse to purchase.


So far I’ve made Jiji, the kitty from Kiki’s delivery service. Not sure if I’m gonna do a bow yet. Thinking about putting a Canadian flag sewable patch on there, that may be going too far though, seems regrettable. Can always take it off though. Will post a photo of the finished product.

The afternoon was spent playing badminton and gardening in the backyard with April. Forgot how much I love just hanging out in the backyard with people. Used to do it all the time as kid, it’s something that’s faded now I have a computer and extreme laziness. Like the good old days of playing badminton in the backyard as a kid, we had strung up a make shift net using a piece of string. Golden.

I also picked up the guts (with the help of April) to venture to the house two doors down to enquire about using their drum kit every now and then. Luckily they were real nice and more than happy to let me have a crack. They also said that they plan on having a few barbeques at theirs and said we could come along. Hoorah!

In the evening April, my other house mate Rodney and I took the sky train into town to meet Beck and Hugues for Japanese food in Gastown. It was this amazing Japanese restaurant that was heaps like the ones in Japan, heaps of yelling. Food was bloody good too.

To top of this excellent day we went home and watched a shitty American movie that required no thinking at all – The Step Brothers. Ahhhh.. what a day.

Running out of creative title names

I received and cashed my last Tim Hortons cheque today. I worked in total a little over a month = 25 shifts = 185 hours. I earnt $1438.27. I would earn that in two weeks of teaching…. Should have saved way more before I came here… oh well.

New job: going fairly well. Had my first camp on Thursday/Friday. Was pretty dang full on. Had no idea what I was really teaching. Really reconfirmed that teaching isn’t my fave thing in the world. It went okay, and at least it’s gonna be the same thing I’m teaching each week so I really get the hang of it. It’s still better than Tim Hortons. Kids are pretty dang funny. They had to build shelters in the forest in teams. This one kid wouldn’t give up his rope claiming that he was a boy scout and that he was sure they would need it later. One of his team mates got so frustrated he yelled “are you gonna marry it or something?!”… ahahah. Hell funny. Half the girls had hand sanitizer, and used it all the times… they’re gonna have such shit immune systems later. One girl had a mirror she carried around with her and all the other girls wanted to borrow it to check their hair… Jesus H! They’re 12! How did this happen.

Life’s getting a bit normal now. I’ve got weekly routines. Some of my old laziness has returned. Makes me glad that this job ends in June to force me to get off my arse and travel around. I’ll really miss living in this house though, it’s been really freakin ace so far.

People keep telling me that Montreal is freakin ace, so I reckon I wanna work there next summer. Force me to learn a bit of French maybe… (prob not).

I left Australia 81 days ago now. I still feel pretty good about being away, I hope that continues.

I’m building a bit of a reputation as being the small Aussie girl who swears a lot and says crude things. A big part of me really likes this. Another part of me things maybe I should make more of an effort to be less crude. I just find it so damn entertaining though.

Spring is in the air

Last week at work I made my first attempt at driving on the right side of the road. I think I did pretty damn well for a first crack. Drove right through the downtown area in this huge freakin van. Lucky it was automatic. It was still fairly nerve racking, and I’m worried that if ever a rushed decision needs to be made I may go back to my old Aussie driving habits. The blinkers are on the left, not the right of the steering wheel. The gear shift is on the right…. Uh oh… sure I’ll get comfortable with it soon enough.


Vancouver doesn’t have the same awesome pubs and bars that Melbourne has, but I’m really appreciating the house parties and the people at the moment. When I go out in Melbourne, usually I’ve got my little posse of people, and would tell any male who approached me to fuck off. I guess that’s not the most conducive way to meet people. I do seem to be a lot more open to meeting people and talking to them at the moment. I guess not being so dang frazzled and drained from teaching help, as does being in another country and not knowing heaps of people. I’m liking it.

April and I went to this excellent house party on the weekend. Dress up theme ‘Dirty Thirties’. He we are looking at our best:


Spring is in the air, everywhere I look around.


Went to VanDusen Botanical gardens yesterday with Beck and Hugues. We were tempted to do a guided tour, but ended up just walking off to explore on our own. Out popped this lovely little old German lady to give us a tour though. At first I was a little peeved as I was still seedy from the previous nights partying and didn’t think I wanted to listen to someone drivel on about plants. It turned out quite well though. She was highly cute and entertaining.


As always, more photos can be seen on flickr.

Ramblings of a tired, pre sick girl

Last week I was waiting for the bus to work. It was 6am, it was freaking cold. It started hailing. Usually I would have found this a most uncomfortable horrible situation. All I could do is laugh though. I think I’ve chilled out about things a lot more, I like this.

Canadians (the ones in Vancouver anyway) for the most part are quite unfashionable. I can only presume because of the weather? It’s all jeans, hiking type shoes and rain/camping type jackets, The north face type thing. I really like this, dressing for practicality and comfort. It’s my kind of dressing.

Last weekend I went out on the town with April and a friend of hers. We were walking through the city at about 2 in the morning? Maybe earlier, can’t remember. We walked by a 7/11 and there were 2 security looking dudes standing outside. I laughed and said, why the hell are there security guards at 7/11. April informed me that they were infact police officers, and then I noticed the rather awful looking woman slumped up against the wall. Yuck. Then as we continued our journey there was a woman who broke down in tears on the street, couldn’t find her phone, or cigarettes, something about a boyfriend who had left her. Then several zombie like people wandered by us. They had blank soulless eyes and had slow strange movements. Earlier on in the night we also saw heaps of homeless people set up with tents. April said that one of them had a crack pipe out. I have decided that Vancouver at night is not my favourite place.

In Vancouver everyone is quite considerate as far as making way for anything who is aged, pregnant, or with a pram on public transport. This older woman came onto one bus with a pram and people got up and made way. Only upon her exiting the bus did I realize that she had a stupid looking miniature dog in there… fuck. That’s so stupid. People are weird.

April and I were walking home from the supermarket or something and noticed that there was this awesome looking New York taxi from the 70’s. Had all the cables on the top where the light went. Had NY taxi painted on the side. We kinda stood there admiring for a little when the owner came over. We thought he thought we were gonna try and knock off his car. But when we explained that we were just admiring it he asked us if we wanted to go for a ride. We said no, and started walking off… then he said… “wanna come back to my house”. We said no again and walked a little faster. Then he got in the car and took off in the same direction as us. When he got to us we were about level with our house. He stopped, made a get in motion, beeped, we shook our heads, he kept going. We walked past our house until we couldn’t see him and then ran back as fast as we could. Yuckers.

I took last Friday off work and April and I hopped onto the sky train, and then on a bus, and then on a Ferry to get to a weekend long Festival, Recompression. It’s an offshoot of the Burning Man festival that happens every year in the Nevada desert. It’s more tame though as food is provided and we got to sleep in cabins (it’s too cold and rainy in BC this time of year to do it any other way). I’ve never seen so many crazy costumes ever. It was awesome. Made me feel really tame. Each of the cabins had themes and decorated them accordingly. I was staying in the Enchanted Orifice. The rooms were themed, the mouth, the ear, the nose, the vag, the arsehole. The vag was connected to the womb, which was set out like a chill space, sheets draped from the roof, cushions, soft lighting. It was really awesome.

People would enter our cabin and be blind folded and offered a taste testing. Then they were taken to one of three chairs. Kiss, lick or bite. Whichever one they sat at, that thing was done to them by a member of our cabin. It was pretty damn crazy. People could stick their fist in the arsehole and get a treat, there was chocolate pudding, sheep, birds, all sorts of crazy shit up there. The ear had a microphone attached to it and when they spoke into it, it echoed and made crazy sounds. People put so much effort into this, just for the one weekend. Made me realize how lazy I am.

The festival was great. The only thing I’d change was the music, all this shitty electronic trance, techno crap. Not my favourite. I liked how relaxed it was during the day though, at Woodford Folk festival there was just too much stuff to see and do, always had the feeling I was missing out on something. This was good coz it was so much smaller, less people, more relaxed. All in all, a great weekend.

Many strange things are happening lately. Keeps things interesting at least. Sorry if this was lengthy and uninteresting. As the title suggests, I am tired and sickly. Forgivable.. yes?! Would put up photo’s, but I can’t be arsed. Perhaps tomorrow.

Oh yeah, started new job today, seems real ace, heaps better than Tim Hortons. Real nervous about driving a van around Vancouver on the right side of the road. Sure I’ll survive.

I really like the look of Canadian houses. They look so livable, so much charm and character. I went a bit nuts on the weekend and took heaps of photos. Here’s one.


Here’s a link to more on my flickr.

I went snow tubing on the weekend. It was freakin’ awesome!! Really made me think seriously about working on the snow fields next winter, somewhere outside of Vancouver to avoid the Olympic crazyness. Be a good opportunity to learn how to ski and snowboard. Here’s a couple of photo’s and video my English friend Alex took of my snow tubing. She forgot to press stop… can’t be bothered learning how to edit it. I think I mention something about almost choking on my tongue towards the end there.









I got the job at Stanley Park! I really wanted the night time job, as it means less responsibilityGood and bad news.

Good:
- more money than tim hortons.
- Better hours than tim Hortons
- Less soul destroying and degrading than Tim Hortons
- No Tim Hortons uniform or hat

Bad:
- Wont get to travel with Rich in May
- Similar to teaching – means more responsibility – nervous that teaching isn’t really my thing, this eliminates most planning, reporting etc, this means being in charge of children though. This will be a good test to see if teaching is really not where I wanna be.

To do list:
- see ice hockey game
- go ice skating
- Science World
- Go skiing


Suzanne Peterson, a teacher who I worked closely with last year passed away last week. Really shocking and sad news. I can’t imagine how people at school must be feeling. It’s so weird being away from it all. This really naïve silly part of me secretly thought that I’d come back to Australia and everything would be exactly the same as when I left.. That’s ridiculous though.

It's my blog and I'll swear if I want to

I have finally decided that I shouldn't feel guilty for swears posted on my blog. If people don't like swears, then too bad. Swears are a part of me, they represent me. I'm not gonna stop for nobody...

That aside... here are a few exciting things that happened today:

1) It really shits me how on public transport people sit in the isle seal on buses and leave room next to them, making it difficult to get a seat. It's okay if there's no one on the bus, but when it's busy, be a little considerate please, move over, make room for others. That being said, I think there are right and wrong ways to go about asking these isle hogs to move over, or to aquire the spare seat. On the B-line bus this morning (6:30am) just as I hopped on the bus I saw a guy (Sir Shovealot) launching himself over this other guy (Mr stabby) to get to the window seat, from what I've gathered Sir Shovealot had asked Mr Stabby to move over, but Mr Stabby had head phones in and didn't move, I didn't see any of this though, I just saw the shoving.. Mr Stabby's face was totally mushed with this other guys bag. So anyway, Mr Stabby totally over reacts to this. He starts shoving the guy with his arm, like a five year old with no confrontational skills. This goes on for a few minutes. Then he gets the worlds smallest pocket knife out of his bag and makes pretend stabbing motions towards Mr Shovealot. Mr Shovealot is not happy. He asks Mr Stabby something, I'm not sure what, presumably.. are you gonna stab me you cunt.. then he pushes past Mr Stabby and goes and dobs to the bus driver. The bus stops.. we all have to wait around a bit. I couldn't hear the conversation they had. The bus waits for ages, you hear passengers at the front making mention of someone with a knife. Finally knife guy takes a hint that this isn't a pleasant situation that's going to go away and gets off the bus. I yelled out that he'd gone, was tempted to stay around and help out... I was late for work though, and hopped on the next bus.

People can be damn silly. It's not cool to shove people.. it's not cool to make stabbing motions at people with a miniature pocket knife. It all could have been avoided if they both hadn't been arse holes though.. *sigh*

Real tempted to do a re-enactment using my camera.. see if I can convince April and Trina to participate.

2) Had a job interview for this job. It's with the Stanley Park Ecological Society. I'm not real sure how I feel about it. Part of me thinks it would be awesome, hanging out in a cool park, teaching kids about the environment. Part of me says it will be a little bit too much like teaching, sounds like a fair amount of responsibility. It'll be just me, no one else running this group. The kids will be a fair bit older than what I'm used to teaching. I'll have to drive some kind of van, which makes me nervous. It also means I won't be able to travel around with Rich, dude I met at woodford. Which makes me sad, we can always do it in July though I guess.

There's also a night one, which means sleeping in a tent at Stanley park 3 nights a week, maybe it's two nights though. That sounds pretty cool too though, I'm not sure.. could mean a lot of non sleep. It means less responsibility in the way of actually teaching kids things and is more like showing them how to put up tents and stuff like that.

I find out next week. I wont worry too much until I hear back from them. Anything beats Tim Hortons, it'd be hard to say no to this.

So much crazy

I was doing my thing at work this morning. It was about 6:45am. Served a girl her coffee, looked up and realised that it was Charis, a German girl who lived at my house for a few weeks while Eliza was travelling OS. Holy freakin jesus. It shocked the shit out of me. Just kinda stared at her with a weird look on my face for a few seconds. She had to rush off, I gave her my number though. So much freakin crazy. Makes it feel like a fairly small world.

My boss has been super nice, which makes me feel bad for searching for another job. We'd had a chat about how much rent I'm paying, and how much pay I'm going to be getting. Yesterday she told me that she's shooting herself in the foot for saying this, but that I should go and find a better paying waitressing job. I'm only here for two years, make the most of it etc. Also said to put Tim Hortons down on my resume, and she's act as a referee. What an absolute champion! So hopefully I'll have more luck finding a job soon.