Counting down the days

So Sandra arrives on Thursday. It's been a lengthy wait but it's all ending very shortly. We've cleaned up the apartment this weekend in anticipation of her arrival and everything is looking pretty good around the house. Work is progressing well and I'm fairly happy with my progress and responsibilities thus far. I haven't been getting up to much on the weekends besides sleeping, mostly it involves doing something with the office crowd on one of the days and then just lazying around the next day.

We watched the conclusion of the 6 nations last weekend and that was good fun, the bar had a good lively atmosphere and there were plenty of representatives for all sides. Plus it was great to see Scotland finally win something considering all the Scottish that had been turning up each week only to leave disappointed.

Hopefully I will be able to log some more stuff in here soon but for now I'm just gonna wait!

The wait continues but the end is in sight!

So I'll cut to the chase and continue on from where we left off last time. Sandra was granted her visa yesterday morning so things have finally been settled and she will be making her way to the glorious promised land that is Canada shortly! There are no solid dates yet but we're hoping for around April 1st. So that's all very exciting and more than likely I will be holding off on any extensive exploration until then.

Work has kicked into a steady flow of work now and the days are passing by well. I'm really enjoying the work that I am doing and the project that I am working on so all is going as well as I could hope for really! There was a departure in the office on Thursday and so we all went out to say our goodbyes. Unfortunately a few of us stayed out a little later than the rest and were paying our dues on Friday. The news from Sandra cleared up my hangover for at least a couple of hours though.

I finally made the plunge and bought myself a mattress for my bed. I didn't think I was missing it that much but even the cheap mattress I got has made a significant difference to the standard of my sleeping comfort. We were out at another local hockey game today but unfortunately we lost this time, still it's good to get out with the office crew over the weekend and just wind down.

Back again!!

Don't worry, I'm still eating! (Ignore the salad dressing wrapper corner, it was removed before consumption (Also, this was delicious!))

So what's been going on for the last 2+ weeks? Well I've had some good weekends between poker in work-colleague houses, going out with Liam the housemate, heading to pool (snooker) parties from work and making my way for a one-night-only man-party 3 hours out of town. I've been kept on my toes anyway and being out with people from the office each weekend has made the transition into a new office much easier.

Work has been slow to get into drive but we're finally at a stage now where things are moving ahead, how much of an affect this delay will have is yet to be seen but hopefully it will be minor. Apart from the slow start everything with work has been great; the people, the location, can't complain.


What's in the box?!

Last weekend we took a trip to watch the local hockey team (The Mooseheads) who have a tendancy to lose but ended up winning the game 2-1 in the dying minutes. Not only this but unknown to use there was a charity drive that day for the local children's hospital. Two minutes into the game the Mooseheads scored a goal and a deluge of stuffed toys rained down over our heads and onto the ice (us being seated in the 3rd row). They're then collected and donated to the charity. Also present in the game were two team-sized brawls; no doubt also for the kids.

Most important of all however is the technological advancements the last two weeks has seen. After searching for a while on Kijiji for a cheap Xbox 360 Liam and I managed to find one for $100 and split it so I finally had something to do after work. Then after my first pay check it was time for the mandatory 1st paycheck spend and it was never going to be anything but a PC. Unfortunately there were a number of complications with credits cards until finally someone in work took the bill for me and I paid him back.

Well it arrived last Thursday after a slight delay due to shipping address complications but it was up and running within a couple of hours. It's like Lego for adults and just as much fun. I still don't have a bed but that hardly matters.


Bits and pieces.


Bits inside pieces. (The benefit of a cheap build is that it's a tidy build)


The final product including stupidly over-sized mouse-mat.

The best news of all for the past while is that while Sandra was home in Sweden last week she has been able to get a new passport and all of the police certificates that she needs to put in her Visa application. We're hoping that by the end of March she'll finally be able to make her way over her and hopefully we can explore this country a little more throughly together.

There are some plans about what to see and that but I haven't really got anything concrete in mind, but I'm sure it will come together in time. In the meantime, I'll push the blogs out to bi-weekly updates (next update on the 17th!). Weather wise, we're due for 15inches of snow over the night and it's been pretty consistent so far so it should be a very snowy day tomorrow. There are some bitterly cold days, but nothing that can't be countered with a few more layers, a hat and some gloves.

Week 2; Settled!

Things are going pretty well so far, the job is moving along and I'm starting to find my place within the team. Progress has not been perfect but it could have been a lot worse and it does look like there is promise on the horizon. I'm scheduled in for a poker night with the office tomorrow so that should be an effective waste of money and will allow me to get to know some of the group a bit better.

I've settled into the apartment a good deal now as we took a trip to Wal-Mart last week and managed to fit out my room with a desk, a chair and even some blinds for my window; Imagine that! So the room is pretty spiffy at the moment, the only thing left to get is a decent bed but hopefully that will be taken care of this weekend.

It's pay day tomorrow so that will allow me to take a step back and look at things, see what I can afford and what I cannot and then hopefully I can begin to look into more exciting things to do at the weekends but for now the weekends will be pretty tame.

We had a flurry of snow over the past few days but nothing too serious and it has all turn to slush now. In other news, there is no water in the apartment as the construction across the road seems to have knocked out the water supply so the water people are over there now trying to sort everything out; Super.

That's the 60second update for this week!

Week 1; Warming Up

So work began on Tuesday after another quick round of city-familiarisation on Monday. The first day was a quick introduction to the company and it's policies and since then it's been a fairly quiet week. It was handy enough starting out on the first week back after the break as it meant that everybody in the office was getting back into the swing of things and I wasn't stepping into a rigid routine. As well as that I am also not the only new-comer so that has made things a little easier still.

It's been fairly slow going for the first week as I have had to wait for certain things outside of our control before I could begin any significant work but that has mostly been sorted by now and so hopefully by next week I will have stopped dipping my feet into the pool and will finally be wading; although just in the shallow end for now.

The office seems great though, very much "open-plan" and everyone is available to talk to. I'm happy with the project I have been put onto and the workload that has been set out for us. I've worked out a reasonable weekly schedule for myself but am finding that once I hit about 8pm I have run out of things to do, but I'm sure I'll remedy that yet. I have no idea what I will be doing on the weekends though, it's certainly a much smaller city than I am used to so I will have to be doing a lot more planning if it is to be anything extravagant. This weekend will be fairly simple though, finally clean my room, set out my stuff and go pick up some bits and bobs around town.

Welcome to Halifax!

So the last two weeks have seen my farewell to Vancouver, my return home and my introduction to Halifax. Let's rewind a little and cover the last week or so in Vancouver shall we. Basically the last couple of days from Thursday through to Saturday were used to say goodbyes to the group on Burnaby as some of them were moving home by Saturday and it was the last weekend that we would all have together. Thursday we went to a cheap student bar, Friday was a smaller club and then Saturday we made the mistake of heading out a little later again and had to queue up for a while to find ourselves in a hostel called the Cambie which was decent fun as it had tons of travellers and students from all walks of life. Day time was mostly spent recovering from and preparing for the following night.

Tuesday was intended as a day to visit anybody that I wanted to say goodbye to so I traveled into town and did some last minute shopping (had to fulfill a Yak-Trak order) and then would wait until 5pm so that everybody was off work and I could get most goodbyes out of the way. Unfortunately as has been wont to happen, my phone ran out of battery and so I wasn't able to get in contact with any body, and at this stage I had already been struggling to figure out how I would fit everything in.

On Tuesday night I had tried to pack some and while doing so I checked the British Airways website and it was asking me for an address in America before it would count me as checked-in. I couldn't figure it out for a while until I finally saw that there was now two return flights booked for me. One set from Dublin-Vancouver and another set from Dublin-Halifax. I has previous inquired about changing the flights and had been told that they would email me with any possible options... well I never got that email. So now I didn't know if I would be flying back to Vancouver or direct to Halifax and of course with all of the trouble in Heathrow BA were 100% unavailable and would not even put me on hold. So I stayed up most of the night to pack both a carry-on bag and my check-in baggage just in case.

So Wednesday morning came and I had had very few hours of sleep the night before. I spent the morning trying to get through to BA and again suffered no luck. At 12pm two of the house mate were going to head up to the mountains and go snowboarding. Tired, stressed out and panicking I decided the best move was to follow them. Once we got onto the mountain I was finally able to relax and forget about all the possible trouble ahead of me, there was much more immediate dangers in front of me! It was a much tougher day this time and there was no down time between falling and picking myself back up. I struggled for the first hour or so as I tried to get to grips with the steeper slops and longer runs but by the end of the day I was clearing the run without falling and generally doing reasonably well. I had one big fall towards the end of the day so called it off after that just in case I did manage to smash a coccyx.

Ready for the fall.

It had been a good day though and I was starving. Lucky there had been one final eating competition arranged and it was to find out who could eat a large pizza the fastest. We got home and as we arrived so did the 6 large pizzas. It was a close run competition but in about an hour one of the house mates had finished and he was crowned pizza eating champion. 2 slices behind him I was pretty happy with my performance. After this I made a dash into town to say a last goodbye to the Burnaby crowd. They went for food and then to the cinema but I skipped on the cinema as it was going to prove difficult to get home afterwards.

Thursday morning arrived and I was finally able to get through to BA and they told me that I was returning to Vancouver but they could offer me the Halifax route for $300. Had I not already had the flights booked to Halifax this would have been terrific and would have given me another day in Dublin too but everything had already been sorted and flying back to Vancouver would allow me to just take a carry-on to Dublin. So I knew what flights I was on, and everything in London was cleared to fly, things were looking good again! The only problem was the pain all over my body from the snowboarding but that wasn't such an issue, on top of this I hadn't been sleeping much/well for the last few days so had little recovery.

Thursday afternoon I spent with Sinead's friend Julie, we went for a sushi in town and then strolled around for a bit. After that it was back to the apartment to finish packing and say goodbye to the house mates and then on towards the airport for my glorious return home!

It all went well until I landed in Heathrow, again I was looking at my watch, looking at my departure time and then considering the logistics of a Heathrow terminal transfer. I was pretty sure I was going to very nearly miss the boarding time and so it was full steam ahead to try and get across the airport, through security and onto my plane. I got through everything with about 10 or 15 minutes to go until departure and finally took the time out to find a departures board that could tell me what gate I was to leave from. I found the board, found my flight and found my gate... "cancelled".

...!*!*$*&!####@@*****!!!

I had had no sense of any trouble until now, and was sure everything was running smoothly. It had been snowing in Dublin and so all flight in and out were suffering. I got put on standby for the next flight as there were no solid seats for any flights and made my way gingerly towards the gates used for Aer Lingus flights. We were treated to a food voucher and some floor space as all the seats had been occupied at this stage. Thankfully I had bought a book before I left Vancouver so I settled down to read that for the day. This was at about 3-4pm.

More and more people arrived, and flights were being delayed and cancelled all over the place. Eventually three flights were rescheduled and people were put out onto the planes. As they were out there an announcement was made on the tannoy that Dublin would be closed for the next hour at least. Following that another announcement; Dublin would be closed for the night. Three plane-loads of people came storming back from the gate area and things were looking bleak. We were escorted back to baggage claim and thankfully I had just my back pack so went to the Aer Lingus customer desk directly. I queued there for another hour only to be told that I could standby tomorrow from 6am and that they would reimburse any accommodation I needed. I booked the closest hotel and put my head to rest.

Up at 4am I made my way back over to the airport and went straight to the gates we had been at the day before. I still have yet to quite figure out why but I was the first person at the gates. I don't know where the mass of people from the day before had dispersed to but I was in little mood to care. (I guess that some had just refunded and others had made their way by train/boat, but that's all I can figure)

Abandoned luggage in Heathrow.

The first flight came at about 8 or 9 and those of us that had been signed up for standby were called to follow the service rep from the desk to the boarding gate. Things might have worked out to our favor only there was a slight hitch; The plane due to fly the route had not arrived from Dublin the previous day and so they had to sub in a plane, a plane with 20 fewer capacity. Thus anybody that was booked onto that flight got priority.

After this we had to go back to the desk and sign up again for standby. A flight for Cork opened up at about half 10 but I let it slide as I was feeling pretty good about getting on a Dublin flight at this stage, I had been first here and even now there were not very many people about. Then the Dublin flight began boarding and after 15 minutes the standbys had still not been called. I walked up to the desk to find out if there was any update.

"There are no seats on the Dublin flight, but I have one on the Cork route if you would like that?"

"Em, gimme gimme gimme!"

The seat had been put on hold I think as someone tried to see if they could get on the Dublin flight but one call and the seat was un-held and I swept it up. I think it was someone who I'd befriended in our struggle to find a flight home who had asked for the seat to be held but I guess sometimes you just gotta look out for yourself. The girl behind me (who had very nearly skipped in front of me) asked if that was the last seat on the Cork flight and was informed that it was. I had been wondering as I waited what sort of system they were using to decide who got flights and this had pretty much clarified it for me. There was no system. First-come-first-served? No. Once you say you want standby they put you up for any subsequent flights? No. People-who-had-been-delayed-longest-go-first? No. It was every man for themselves and luck was your greatest friend. They had at least 5 or 6 tickets there for people that wanted to be put on flights. People that has explicitly and multiple times stated that they would be OK with any flight into Ireland and yet the reps had just sat there with empty seats at their fingertips. Had I not just secured a flight home I'd have been pretty agitated.

I flew to Cork and by a stroke of luck Michael was coming to Dublin from Cork and so I hitched a ride with him all the way back to Palmerstown. It had been a zig-zag over Dublin for 2 days but finally I was home; A day late, but home. It's still strange how normal everything is once you're home. It feels like you have never gone away, as soon as you recognise the scenery, drive into the estate, walk through the door; it seems the most normal thing in the world. Of course everything was covered in a layer of snow this time but that was inconsequential.

Snow fort



Palmerstown snow.

The Christmas break was terrific. A day with both sets of family, surrounded by my family at all times, getting to celebrate Sandra's birthday with her and plenty of time with her outside of that. The time she was in work gave me a chance to be around the family and most time outside of that was spent with her. It all went much to fast and my near-constant exhaustion didn't help very much but I'm delighted I got to go back for even the small amount of time and was grateful that I didn't get stranded for the entire thing.

Not content with a pain-free flight home I screwed up the online check-in for my return flight (at least I'm 90% sure I did.) and so when I got to Dublin airport they only gave me my flight to London and told me I would have to sort the other flight out once I got there. Not exactly how I wanted to spend the last few minutes with my dad and Sandra as we wondered just how badly I had screwed up but eventually we relaxed enough to say our goodbyes.

I got to London and again was running around Heathrow trying to figure out how to get my ticket on that side but it was not too complicated, that was until I got to the desk and the woman said "Oh yes, that's perfect Mr.Fearon just one moment though as there are no seats on that plane"... !***!@@####! ... "OK, what we can do is give you an upgrade, is that OK?" ... Wahoo! So my suggestion to everyone is not to check in until 30minutes before your flight and you shall be rewarded for your risk! The flight would have gone without incident only for a toddler that had just learned the optimal frequency to scream at in order to get the most attention.

The journey back to the house was a little bizarre especially as I walked to the house and realised that in the morning I had been in Dublin and now here I was at 8pm and I was half way across the world. A little weird. The house greeted me with rapturous joy and chinese takeaway arrived not 10minutes after I had walked in the door, perfect. We had a small secret santa afterwards and watched some TV before I retired to packing and bed.

In the morning I went on the hunt for a cheap suitcase as I had been checking the flight details (paranoia) for my flight to Halifax and there was some special offer on which allowed people travelling before January 11th to check in two bags. This saved me a ton of bother as I had planned on leaving a lot of books left behind me and shipping them later but if I could get a 2nd checked bag then I was laughing. A walk around town lead me to a thrift store where I picked up a 2nd hand suitcase for $5.

Once everything was packed at home I had a decision to make; do I send my bags to the airport now, store them there and then go out tonight or would I stay in the house for the night and bring the bags to the airport in the morning. I feel asleep from about 4-7pm and so that pretty much sealed the deal, I would stay in for the night and just concentrate on the flight. Trying to save more heartache I plugged in all sorts of printers around the house but they were out of ink, then I traveled into the village (and transport was free to try and dissuade drink-driving, great idea) to try internet cafes but they were all closed. Ugh, guess I'd just have to check-in in the morning.

2 of the house mates were going out and invited me but I wasn't feeling in the mood so had to decline, the rest of us spent the night drinking some drinks in the house and just chatting. 12 rolled around and we said a little hurrah but nothing serious, we went to bed by about 3 and I slept by 4 having finally put everything where it needed to be. I was up at 6am to hear the other two housemates come in the door (who'd said they would be home early and that it would be grand), well I was relieved that I had stuck to my guns and not gone out, I can only imagine the panic I would have been in as they had been trying to get a taxi since 2am. I said goodbye to everyone in the house, was given a lift to the airport by the Irish couple in the house, printed everything OK at the airport and awaited my flights.

Packed up and ready to go.

$5 suitcase. Bling bling.

Apart from a small delay for the Ottawa to Halifax leg due to a late flight from Montreal everything went as smooth as I could ask. The plane from Ottawa to Halifax was a small little thing and I had to hunch over the move down the carriage but we got there in one piece. I got a taxi to the apartment and stayed up for an hour or so chatting to my new room mate.

Today I was up at about 7am and left the house by half 8 to have a look around. The city is much smaller than any others that I have stayed in which is both good and bad, it means everything is within walking distance and easily reachable but then there just isn't as much going on around as I am used to. Especially today on a Sunday as even though it was the 2nd of January it still felt unusually quiet and I think this is because they just take Sunday's very easily around here. Most shops seem to close every Sunday and the streets were quiet for my entire walk with the exception of the morning runners. I had covered most of the major parts of town by 12. Work is about a 2 minute walk from the front door and there is a supermarket right across the road from work, all in all it seems pretty good and I'm looking forward to getting stuck into work come Tuesday.

Park around the corner from the apartment. And at the end of that park?

Work!



























Home away from home.

Whistler inspires a new addiction.

So after the text-attack of last week I'll hopefully have some more pictures ready for this weeks entry. With the success of recent weeks it was finally time for a significant trip, and what better trip could one ask for than a trip to the Winter Olympic mountains. The set up was as follows; 9-11 people. 2 cars. 2 hotel rooms. We gathered at what was quickly becoming the meeting place for most of us in Burnaby at around 6pm on Friday and made our way towards the mountains. Unfortunately it was pitch black and so there was very little opportunity to take in the sights around us but I'm told that they're quite amazing so that will have to suffice.

Once we arrived at the hotels (about 8pm) there was a clear divide between the wants and needs of the people. Essentially, some wanted long nights, and some wanted short. So that left 3 people in one hotel room and 6-8 in another. No problem. The discrepancy in numbers comes from a couple of friends of friends who were going to be staying with us for just the first night. Well the extra couple showed up and had been drinking since about 12 which was without doubt only going to lead to greater and greater things! We skipped the hotel room for a while and got some food outside. Walking around the village at Whistler was a joy, the christmas lights had all be strung out and snow peppered the rooftops and window sills of the hotels, shops and apartments.

The first night was reasonably quiet, with the exception of the midday drunkards. The fella in the couple snored like a good thing all night and 6 of the 8 people in the room that night had less than optimal sleep. Thankfully the excitement of the mountains meant that we were all still reasonably fresh-faced when we woke up at 7am. From here we went and collected any rentals that needed collecting and generally got ready for everything. When it came time to go up onto the mountains I was split from the group as I was going to be doing lessons for the day while the rest of them would be riding the mountains by themselves having all had some sort of previous experience.

The lessons were done in a group of 7 students and 1 instructor. It was fine to learn in the group but was a little tedious as you weren't able to consistently practice things as you had to wait your turn or wait for others to complete something. This was OK at first as you got a chance to see things done before you tried but after a while I just wanted to be on the board as much as possible. We had lunch higher up the mountain and then closed out the day with more practice until about 3pm.

Well I only had one problem with the day; where the hell had this stuff been for my entire life? It's funny that growing up in Ireland I've had basically no opportunity to go and do this, and maybe that's a good thing as I get to experience something completely new to me. I've always been told by people that I had to go skiing or snowboarding but I'd never been quite that enthused about the whole thing but now I see what I've been missing.

I was completely bursting with energy and excitment for the rest of the day and there was absolutely nothing that could slow me down. We meet up after the mountain closed and returned all of our stuff. The next step was clear and not particularly difficult; locate, obtain and consume alcohol. The hotel had a hot tub so once we had our stash we all made our way to the hot tub and relaxed after the days activities. We hot-tubbed and swam outside in the snow until about 9 and then made our wobbly way back to the room. We stayed in the hotel for a while and then made our way out at about 10.

We slept like logs that night and most of the group got up the following morning to go back out onto the slopes for a few hours since they had 2 day passes. Conditions were supposed to be great but then it rained on the mountain instead of snowing and that spoiled things a little (or so I'm told). We drove home in the afternoon and missed the scenery again for a second time. It was a great weekend all round and certainly one that will stick with me for a long time to come.

Most of the group Sunday morning. Unfortunately we didn't get a picture of all us in our full gear.










A picture says a thousand words.

On Monday we had a post-Whistler reunion at the bowling alley where we played until the wee hours of the morning. Tuesday was a treat for the house mates as they were finally exposed to my culinary delights. I had been promising them coddle for a while now and even the Irish couple in the house had never had it before and anticipation was reaching dangerous levels. Armed with instructions from dad I hit the supermarket and picked up all of the required elements. I even had to send someone out for a new super-sized pot for all the stuff. As I was preparing things I was sure that something was going to go horribly wrong but much to my surprise it actually turned out quite well! It certainly brought me right back to Dublin and apart from the store bought ham instead of butchers ham the whole thing was quite satisfactory indeed. I know what I'll be living on in Halifax for the first few months anyway.

The spread of ingredients before the super-pot arrived. I'm still not sure if the 2pints of water/cider was correct or not but it didn't look like it at this stage, so I just went for the whole 2 liters instead and that seemed to sort things out.


Delish!