Not bad for $75

Not bad for $75, originally uploaded by Tim McDonald.

Sometimes, you just have to be in the right place at the right time. The couch that I had been PROMISED FOR THE LAST 3 MONTHS ("we'll pick it up this weekend"), as I had long suspected, fell through. However, on Saturday, saw a flyer in the laundry room from someone in the building selling a couch. Looked OK in the picture and the price was reasonable at $150. Gave the bloke a call and he mentioned that it had a 'slight stain' and the price would be a little lower because of this. This didn't fill me with confidence, but called the guy up anyway. Went and had a look and it checked out OK. Yes, it did indeed have a small stain (from the red/orange cover they had on it which must have got wet at one stage), as well as signs that it had been sat in for a few years, but nothing really noticeable. Because of this, the asking price was revised down to $75. I even bought a pedestal fan from them for $15. The place is not air conditioned and being on the 25th means I have 24 floors' worth of heating to contend with as it rises up through the floors. Best of all, I didn't have to worry about delivery as it was already in my building. It shouldn't be hard for me to dispose of it as I'm actually at least its third owner in the building as the people I bought it off bought it from someone else in the building.

Other than that, bugger all to report aside from the fact that we're actually getting some nice days here and the days themselves are getting much longer now. It's light when my alarm goes off at 5.30am and the last traces of light are gone by 10pm. Certainly beats the 8am to 4pm hours of December.

It's Funny Coz It's True

Move Along, Nothing to See Here

Nothing to See Here, originally uploaded by Tim McDonald.

It's not every day that you see a plane wreck on a city beach. This is apparently the set for the movie 'Passengers', being filmed here in Vancouver.

Otherwise, pretty uneventful weekend.

Seattle

Seattle, originally uploaded by Tim McDonald.

Last Saturday went for a drive with Nick and Annette down to Seattle. Seattle's about 3 hours by car from Vancouver, but this can vary wildly depending on how busy the border crossing is. We had a relatively easy crossing, though we did have to get out and fill out the green US immigration forms and pay US$6 for the privilege. All up, it took us about half an hour to clear immigration. The upshot of all this is that we now have a 3 month 'visa' for the US so should be able to come and go as we please until the beginning of May. I'm hoping to get Las Vegas and Hawaii trips in in this time.

The drive down was fairly easy as (would be expected) you take multi-lane freeways all the way into the city centre. The freeway to Seattle is littered with shopping centres ranging from outlet malls like Harbour town to giant Costcos. As we had skipped breakfast when we left, we made the mandatory stop into a Maccas. They probably do this in Canada too, but the breakfast menu at McDonald's in the States has items called 'McGriddles' which look like the normal muffins but with scones (or possibly damper) instead of the muffins. We just had the normal muffins.

Got into Seattle proper at about 11.30 (about the time the rain started, naturally) and headed straight for the Space Needle. Unlike Vancouver, the centre of Seattle has overpasses galore. Hopefully it will catch on in Vancouver and ease the traffic problems. The Space Needle itself looked smaller in the flesh than I had imagined but the view from the top was still great. Unfortunately due to the rain, I couldn't get any decent photos outside so had to make do with the one above taken from the lookout.

After the Space Needle we thought that a trip on the monorail would be a good way to see Seattle. After paying our $4 for the round trip, we waited, and waited, and waited. When the monorail finally arrived we were presented with a 45 year-old monorail car that looks like it was designed by the same person that designed the original Starship Enterprise in Star Trek. Once we boarded and found our seats we sta back and enjoyed the view of downtown Seattle from 10 metres off the ground. After two blocks an announcement came over the PA saying that we were approaching some stop at a mall and that we had to get off would have to get back on for the return leg. Yes, we paid $4 for a two-block return ride. We had a quick look around the mall and the immediate surrounds.

The city centre of Seattle is pretty much the same as Vancouver though it looks a bit cleaner (less litter) and we did not see any homeless people begging for money. I'm told though that it's worse when you get outside of the city centre. At this point, we thought we'd go for a drive and try to find the Boeing factory. The drive out to the airport took about 25 minutes and we pulled up at a place called the Museum of Flight to have a look around and ask for directions to the Boeing Factory. We soon learned that the Boeing factory was another 45 minutes' drive and as it was already 2pm we decided to leave it for another time and just look around the Museum of Flight.

The Museum of Flight is actually quite good; the first thing you see is a massive open area with old (pre WWII) aircraft hanging from the ceiling and a giant SR-71 Blackbird Spy Plane (the fastest plane ever built) taking centre stage. I have put a few photos on my Flickr page. Across the road are a number of airliners; most notably a Concorde and one of the ealry Air Force One aircraft. You can go inside these aircraft. Air Force One is particullarly interesting because you can see all the offices, meeting rooms and even the safes that contained the codes to the nukes. One of the highlights for me were WWI and WWII displays full of planes from both sides in the wars. The WWII one was great - full of BF-109s, Mustangs, and P-47s to name a few.

Left the museum at about 4.30 and decided to make the trip back home. Along the way back, we stopped off at one of the Harbour Town-esque outlet malls. There is a Nike shop there and shoes were incredibly cheap; about US$50 per pair.

The last point of note is our experience with the McDonald's drive through as we left the mall. One of the items we (I) wanted was a small coke. It transpired something like this:

Nick: Cheesburger, fillet-o-fish and a small coke
Girl: shake?
Nick: no, a coke
Girl: shake?
Nick: no, a coke. You know, coca-cola?
Girl: ok

I looked at the screen that displayed what we'd ordered and saw that she'd put down a vanilla shake. What the? How do you get 'vanilla shake' from coca cola? Any way, I managed to get a medium coke instead of a small coke and decided to quit while we were ahead.

I recommend a day trip to Seattle if you're in Vancouver, but you should leave early (around 6am) in order to get a full day.

Just don't order a coke at a Maccas drive through.

View from the 25th Floor

View from the 25th Floor, originally uploaded by Tim McDonald.

Had the Shaw cable guy around this evening to connect my cable TV and (more importantly) internet in my new apartment.

Took the day off on Thursday to move into the new place at the other end of town. This time, I'm on the 25th floor with, I reckon, a better view. It will be great when summer finally comes around. The picture above is a panorama of the view from my balcony that was created from five photos joined together on the computer. If you click on the photo, you'll go to the picture on my Flickr page and will be able to view a much larger version. When you look at the larger version, you'll also see where the software didn't quite get it right.

I'm now at the west end of downtown Vancouver near English Bay (the bay in the photo). Just past the building is the Stanley Park. The apartment isn't as nice as the Yaletown one, but it's much cheaper (half the price) but is unfurnished. All up, I think I'll save about $500 per month here after accounting for furnishing the place and monthly bills (the Yaletown apartment was furnished and included internet, cable TV etc etc). As a bonus, two of my mates from work also live in the building.

The area around is a lot older and a little bit 'grottier' than Yaletown but has pretty much everything I need on within a five-minute walk: Safeway, McDonalds, Starbucks, Dentist, bottle shop, Japanese restaurant, Indian restaurant, London Drugs (supermarket/electrical/computers/ chemist). There are also tons of restaurants within a 10 minute walk. One thing of note, is that the West End is the heart of Vancouver's gay and lesbian community. I was only made aware of this AFTER I signed up for the place, though the pink bus shelters and rainbow flags along Davie Street (the main street by my building) should have given it away. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Besides, I much prefer it to the yuppies in Yaletown poncing around wearing their rectangle glasses carrying a coffee (grande half-decaf soy chai mocha latte extra hot) in one hand and their bloody poodle in the other. Wankers.

Furniture-wise, starting to build up again- now have a bed (from Ikea) and a TV (37" Viewsonic LCD). Need to get a couch, though the styrofoam blocks that protected the TV are doubling as an ersatz couch for the time being.

And Now Fog

And Now Fog, originally uploaded by Tim McDonald.

Bright blue skies one day, thick fog the next.

My New Car

Hummer_blog, originally uploaded by Tim McDonald.

Not.

Found this Hummer parked in the car park at Granville Island.

Speaking of Sunny Conditions...

Forecast_resize, originally uploaded by Tim McDonald.

...forecast for next week.

Vancouver is now on water restrictions due to the drought.

A Room With Two Views

Lounge_blog, originally uploaded by Tim McDonald.

I know I haven't really shown much of the apartment, and my first (and last) effort could at best be described as 'rubbish', so here's one I took today to take advantage of the sunny conditions. Used two external flashes- one on the couch to the left of picture and one behind the TV to light the room.

I'll try and get some more before I move on Thursday.

Porcelain Bus and Porcelain Shards

Tranquility, originally uploaded by Tim McDonald.

Well.....not a bad weekend just gone by. Friday night was a bit rowdier than I planned. Nick, Annette and I decided to head out for tea for a quick bite and a drink or two. As we were leaving, Jens Korte (MD of Heli-One Norway, and all-round nice-guy) asked if he could tag along. No problem we said.

After washing our dinner down with 3 or 4 pints of beer, we bode Jens farewell as he had a ski-trip planned for the weekend and headed off The Foggy Dew pub underneath Nick and Annette's hotel. The rest of the night comprised drinking round after round of Canadian Club and coke interspersed with B-52 shots. Needless to say the night ended in a blur and I spent the night on Nick and Annette's sofa (after getting crook in the dunny).

Saturday was pretty much a write off, but things picked up after sending Annette out on a Macca's run. Nothing cures a hangover like grease.

Annette and I left Nick to sleep it off and headed out to the Costco at Richmond to break in my new membership card. Costco is basically a huge discount store where everything is sold by the kilo or gallon. For example, you go to Costco if you want to buy a BUCKET of peanut butter. It's also CHEAP at Costco. I have my eye on a 37" LCD TV for my new place that they are selling for $999. It's a Viewsonic too; not some K-Mart rubbish (Centrex anyone?). Besides Richmond, there is also a Costco downtown and it's almost as huge as the Richmond one. To give you an idea of the size, just think of a Bunnings that sells food, electricals, medicine, toiletries, clothes etc etc. It even has its own meat, fruit & veg, and bakery sections (the baked goods are baked onsite). The only catch, is you need to be a member, not just to purchase, but to even set foot in the store. They actually shoooed me out of the Downtown store when I first went there without a membership. Basic membership costs $55 per year.

The weather on Sunday was great. The sky was a strange shade of grey (ie BLUE) and the rain was conspicous by its absence. Despite the clear skies and sun, it was still only -1C. This was the perfect opportunity to check out the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden in Chinatown as I'd heard it was one of the places you must see when in Vancouver. So I dragged Annette and Nick out to take a look. It is actually rather nice, and the snow and ice made for some picturesque scenes. The pools in the garden had actually frozen over and the ice must have been pretty thick as Nick's best efforts to stomp it with his foot (luckily) came to naught. Half of the garden is free to see, but you have to pay $8.75 to see the other part and there are regular tours with a guide. We paid up and joined a tour with a little old Chinese lady who looked and sounded like Yoda (apologies if you're reading this lady). She had some interesting things to say, but it was just too cold to stand around listening to her talk about where each individual pebble and porcelain shard in the courtyard floor came from (maybe I'll come back in summer for this) so we cut her loose and headed back into town for some food.

If you're in Vancouver, I'd say it's definitely worth visiting for the free section but $8.75 is a bit steep for the other part.

I did get some good photos though.

And frostbite.

BC Place Roof Collapses

Deflated, originally uploaded by Tim McDonald.

Got home from signing up for a new apartment (details to come) to be greeted by the sight of BC Place with its roof collapsed. Apparently, a tear developed in the fabric (it is an 'inflatable' roof) followed by a loud bang as it collapsed. BC Place officials claim this was intentional 'controlled deflation' after the initial tear was discovered.

For those interested, more info can be found on the CBC (Canada's equivalent of the ABC) website:
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2007/01/05/bc-dome.html

Happy New Year

1 Jan 07 - 7pm -> Return DVD, originally uploaded by Tim McDonald.

Happy New Year everyone.

All the best for a safe and successful 2007.

Merry Christmas!

Cozy, originally uploaded by Tim McDonald.

I hope everyone had a good Christmas.

Not much happening lately in 'ol Raincouver. Still bloody raining, though I shouldn't complain as I know you folks back home can't get a drop.

Christmas up here was pretty good. Knocked off early on Friday after the 'surprise' drinks. These weren't the usual drinks in the boardroom that I'd grown accustomed to at CHC Oz; it was a fully-catered affair of wine and assorted nibbles that included among other things spicy meatballs and mini-quiches. Best of all, we were waited on by two waiters and one (very hot) waitress. To top it off, we were given cab charges to get home. Spent the evening in town with Travis and Elizabeth from work. Stumbled home around 1am.

Got an invite for tea from Travis on Saturday night and gladly accepted. Had a roast lamb meal with Travis and Liz, Roar (also from Heli-One, his wife Sammie and Liz's sister. It was a bit of a United Nations there that night only the girls were locals- Travis is American and Roar is Norwegian. The highlight of the night was 1980s Trivial Pursuit and copious amounts of Roar's Norwegian Aquavit (Scandinavian spirit made from potatoes). The story goes that while it's being distilled, the barrels must be put on a boat and cross the equator before being bottled. The back of the bottle's label has the boat's name and the voyage date that the barell was on. It smells sweet, but burns like buggery going down. I guess it keeps them warm. Stumbled home about 2am this time. The walk home was punctuated by stops for slices of pizza along Davie Street (gotta love all-night pizza places). Had sobered up by the time I got home.

Sunday was another crappy, rainy day. Had made plans with Annette to go to the botanic gardens to see the lights, but the rain put the kibosh on that idea and agreed to do it another time. The day didn't get much better. That night, I got a call from Nick to say that Annette and her Mum had been in a car accident. They were both fine, just a bit shaken up and some minor bruises. The (company) car is probably written off though.

Had Christmas lunch with Annette (didn't need to administer first aid Brownie), her Mum and Nick then went out for Christmas dinner with Ashley and Kate Strauss and their kids. Dinner was a buffet at a place called Hart House, a big tudor mansion in a Suburb Called Burnaby. It's a little bit like Ayers House back in Adelaide.

Other than that, just took it easy.

Looking forward to New Year's now.

Oh Dear.

Forecast 28 Nov, originally uploaded by Snappy Tim.

Never Seen This Before....

Cool Bike, originally uploaded by Snappy Tim.

Today was the second day running that I saw this snow covered bike at Airport Station while waiting for the connecting bus out to the South Terminal where CHC is. Has the owner abandoned it due to the snow? Forgotten about it? Left it there while they're out of town? Who leaves a perfectly good bike just because it's covered in snow. Surely you could just knock the snow and ice off and get it working again?

Today was freezing and last time I checked, it was -7C. The snowing had stopped, and we had clear skies and sunny conditions, yet the mercury never got above zero .

More snow is predicted for tomorrow.

This Is How I Felt Today

I'll Call Him 'Mini-Me', originally uploaded by Snappy Tim.

The snow continued all night downtown and continued pretty much all day out at the airport.

Around my place there was a blanket 4 inches thick covering everything, and about 6 inches (and counting) out at the airport and Richmond. It was really pretty, but f$@#ng freezing. Ive never felt so cold in my life and it's going to be worse tomorrow, with low of -8C tonight and a 'high' of -3C. I don't know how the folks in places like Winnipeg cope!

I didn't get to work until after 9 (would normally have been there before 8) as the buses were now chockers with people taking the bus to avoid driving. One good thing about this snow on a work day is that we got to knock off at 2pm.

After getting home, I quickly changed into some warm clothes and went out to get some shots of the snow. Some of my more successful photos are on the Flickr page. I'll be taking the camera in to work tomorrow so hopefully the snow hasn't turned into grey slush by the morning.

Snow!

The weekend forecast predicted snow, but a quick look out the window Saturday morning would make you think that snow was the last thing that would happen. Hardly a cloud in the sky and clear view through to the mountains, where the descending snow line is evident.

Took advantage of the good weather to go into town and so some shopping. Grabbed some bargains (2 x t-shirts, 2 x sweaters, 2 x business shirts, and a fleecy vest for $110) at Sears. Sears is a big department store along the lines of Myer or David Jones. They do have much better sales -at least on menswear- with many items discounted 40-50%. And it's good stuff that's discounted too. The clouds had started to gather by the time I got home at about 2. At about 3 o'clock, the Rolling Stones started their sound check for their concert at BC place that night. I could hear the sound check, and later that night their concert, from my place. It sounded pretty much the same as The Big Day Out did when I worked at Wayville. The Stones actually played for quite a while -went on after 8 and went through till about 11. No doubt 2 of those hours would have been the post 1980 songs that no-one cares for but there you go.

The snow finally appeared at about 5pm with just a few flakes. Went and had a coffee with Ashley (moved out to Vancouver from CHC Australia) and his family at a nearby cafe. During this time the snow really started to pick up. We discussed a possible trip to the snow in the coming weeks. The snow continued for most of the night.

It started snowing again at about 8.30 this morning at continued to do so all day (it's still going as I write this). They've even had to bring out ploughs ("that name again is 'Mr Plow'") to keep the roads safe.
Decided to brave it and go for another walk back into town to get a decent waterproof/warm jacket as it's obvious to me now that I'm going to need one as my current jackets are woefully inadequate and I don't want to ruin another leather jacket.
I'd forgotten how slippery it gets when it snows, so the walk into town took much longer as I avoided slipping over. Went back to Sears and bought a nice big (and warm) jacket. It too, was on sale with 40% off, so all up it cost about $100. Wore it back home and then went out to go for a walk along the marina and get some pictures of the snow.

Left: view from my balcony at 11am today.










The first photo had to be a Luke Byrne style "take a picture of your feet in the snow" and then one of my building similar to the one I took the other day for comparison.

Following this, I did a quick lap around the block. In one of the photos below, you can see that the marina itself is starting to freeze over. Any cars that were left out overnight were now covered with a thick layer of snow.

Winter is Coming.

Map, Schmap.

Stumbled across this great little download via the Vancouver Flickr Group. In a nutshell, Schmap is a dowloadable city guide. You install the player and then can choose guides for a number of cities. Currently, most of the guides are for North American cities, but there are quite a few for Europe and even a couple for Australia, and likely more to follow.

The guts of it is the central map which shows the whole city, or a section of the city. You can then choose to show places like pubs, restaurants, museums etc.
Clicking on a place on the map displays information about it in the right-hand paine such as a review and contact details. Pretty handy for findiing places when you don't know the city. You can also bookmark your favourite places for future reference or use the search function to find places of interest. No doubt not every place is included, but it's a start.

The player and a guide is about 2MB and are free. Check it out at http://www.schmap.com/

A walk along the Marina

I took advantage of a break in the rain that had been falling most of the day to get out and break in my new lenses. Luckily for me, the break in the rain happened at 4 o'clock, which just happens to be when the sun starts setting at this time of the year. This lead to some 'golden' light.

On the left is my apartment building taken from the park (called Cooper's Park) across the road on the waterfront. My place is on the 22nd floor, and the building has 39 floors, so count down 17 from the top to work out where I am.

Whilst the light was warm and golden, it was actually freezing and the grass in the park was muddy and squelchy.

The picture below was taken looking back from the marina towards my apartment building. Mine is the tall one on the right.

Kayaking along false creek is quite popular and I intend to give it ago when the weather warms up. I like the effect of the dusk light on the buildings and their reflections in the water. The two kayakers happened to come past as I was taking the shot.

This last photo was taken from in front of the first tall apartment building in the last photo. Looking out over the marina towards the sunset. This photo is actually a bit of a 'cheat'. I used Photoshop to make it what is called a High Dynamic Range (HDR) image. The dynamic range of a camera (both digital and film) the range from total brightness (ie total white) to total darkness )black) that its sensor (digital) or film will capture when exposed to light. A camera's dynamic range is not a large as your eye's, so you'll find that when taking a photo in conditions where there are both brightly lit and shadowy areas that your picture won't come out the same way as you saw it with your eyes. The photo will either show the areas in shadow properly and make the brighter areas appear as bright white, or the reverse, where the bright areas (such as a cloudy sky) look right, but the shadow areas are black, or near black. Normally to make a photo that shows both the light and dark areas properly, you need to take a number of separate photos (say, three): one exposing for the shadow, another exposing for the bright scene and a third somewhere in the middle. You can then use a piece of HDR software to 'merge' the three photos into one image exhibiting a greater range from light to dark. In the case of this photo, I took one picture in RAW format (this is important) and adjusted its exposure in Photoshop and saved it. I did this twice: once adjusting so that the bright area (the sky) looked correct and then again so that the darker foreground looked correct (or at least, better). Note, when I took the photo, I was exposing so that the sky looked correct. This gave me the following pictures, exposing for the sky on the top and for the shadows on the bottom.



I opened both images in Photoshop and 'dragged' the lighter one on top of the darker once (creating another layer on top). Then just used the 'magnetic lasso' tool and selected around the skyline and the bottom of the picture. Then just inverted the selection so that the 'blown out' sky was selected and then 'cut' it to get rid of it, exposing the correctly exposed sky below. Voila! Basically done. Did some other minor retouching to rectify some of the areas missed when selecting the sky. If you look closely, you can see a smudge in the sky above the tall building on the right. This is due to some sloppy cloning on my part when cleaning up. Spending more time on it would have done a better job.

Class dismissed.