I've moved into a nice, warm, confortable, fully furnished 2 bedroom basement apartment with an English guy from Portsmouth named Ceri. I've landed a pretty central location, as it's about 15minutes by train to the city centre - and about the same by bike (i love my new bike). It's $400 per month, which is equivalently more expensive than other places i've lived in at home or abroad (but i've been incredibly lucky with amazing cheap rent deals in the past) - but this price is about mid-range for Vancouver. The kicker is that when i leave the house and walk out the back gate, i'm faced with a HUGE park and Trout Lake smack bang in the middle of it!
It also a 10 minute walk down to one of the funkiest districts in all Vancouver - Commercial Drive. To make a comparison, it's very similar to Brunswick or Smith Streets in Fitzroy/Collingwood area. It's full of great cafe's, clothing shops, insanely awesome record stores, organic fruit and veg shops, international flavour restaurants, and a serenely cool relaxed vibe in the street populated by uber-cool hippy bohemian-type student/artist folks strolling by with nary a care in the world. There seems to be a bit of an activist scene in Vancouver which kinda centres around this area as well. Just my scene. I like it!!!
My housemate Ceri is a 30 year old Oxford graduate who works as a designer/A.I. programmer for computer game company Radical. He's a bit of a sophisticated, intellectual type, and really interesting to talk to - lots of fascinating conversations and ideas to think about and mull over with this guy. He has a very eclectic cdee collection too - lots of stuff i've never heard of, but is rather appealing to my ears.
I've been working for the past 2 weeks for a small boutique property management company, as a receptionist of all things!! It's $13 per hour, and it was initially a 3 week contract and so was due to finish up next Friday March 4th, but the boss called me into her office yesterday and asked me if i'd stay on til the end of the month. it's a pretty cruisy position with not a whole lot to do, and i have a lot of spare time on my hands, but i manage to make myself look busy, and when i'm given something specific to work on, i can get it finished pretty quickly, all the while exuding my Aussie charm on the guys and girls there!!
I was initially contemplating a long-weekend trip down to Seattle when this contract finished, taking the weekend plus the next monday and tuesday, making it a nice 4 day trip away, so when i was offered the contract extension, i mentioned this to my boss. she was like 'go ahead, take them'....so it looks like i'm going to Seattle!!
I've been talking about going to Seattle for about the last 6 years, and when i say i'm gonna do something, i usually do....it might take quite a while for it to happen, but it does - Canada was about 4 years in the making, but i'm here now! The fact that my good American mate Jennifer from my time in Edinburgh is from there makes it even better! I can't wait!!!
I've also got plans to head up to Whistler and the snow for a wee bit before the ski season finishes. It would be criminal of me to be here in Vancouver and not spend some time at one of North America's premier ski-snowboarding locations. I've pretty much nixx-ed the idea of spending the remainder of the season up there, and trying to get work. A spanner was thrown in the works of that plan when i arrived 3 weeks ago and there was NO snow at Whistler. But i reckon i can afford a couple of weeks before the end of April.
talk soon,
anthony
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