Sick Powder + Sweet Air = Gnarly Faceplant

Greetings, most excellent dudes!

This week has been pretty action packed, what with it being our last few days of freedom before we start our new jobs. So, while Mikala was getting her toes tickled at the reflexologist, I headed out in search of some rad snowboarding action!

Located just to the north of Vancouver, Grouse Mountain is about a two hour journey from our house via bus, boat and one more bus. Due to the ridiculously cheap public transport system this trip only cost me a mere £1.80 which meant I had a few pennies spare to hire some bodacious boarding duds and a bitchin' deck to ride the mountain on. The hire shop is located at the top of the cable car - this is pretty handy as it meant that I could stroll up in my civvies, collect my gear (which I reserved via the interweb the night before) and hit the slopes without having to lug any heavy equipment with me on the bus/boat/bus. Sweet.

I have heard that there has been pas de neige in Europe. Well this certainly isn't the case here: there was about 180cm of snow and all the runs were pristine. On top of that, as it was a weekday, I pretty much had the whole mountain to my self. Excellent!

There are two main differences between skiing in Europe and Canada. The first is the pistes: in Canada they are not marked out, which was a little confusing at first, as I ended up on a double black mogul field early on in the day - not good. Also the black runs have ominous sounding names like "Coffin", "Purgatory" or "Inferno" which, quite frankly, is a bit naff. The second difference is lunch (ah yes, the obligatory food reference): In Europe you can replenish you energy levels on saucisson, goulash and hearty French fayre. Here it's a burger or pizza.

Anyway, putting these minor niggles aside the day was excellent. Grouse Mountain has some great, albeit short, runs and two rather excellent snowboard parks. I did manage to catch some bitchin' air in the parks but thought it prudent not to risk a rail-slide in case I came home to Mikala in a plaster cast.

Next stop: Whistler! Now where did I put the Deep Heat...

x
Dan

We is good

Howdy, all!
Apologies for tantalising you with the promise of exciting news in our last blog entry. Those of you who thought Mikala might be pregnant, leave the room now - you've just been fired, Alan Sugar style. Babies have to wait for house and jobs....hmmmm......

The news is that last week both Mikala and I received awesomely exciting job offers!

I have managed to convince the biggest video game developer in the world into employing me to design and produce games for them - woohoo! I'll be working as an Assistant Producer on Electronic Arts' "Fusion" team. Fusion does all of EA's hand-held games (for PSP and DS) and I've been put on "Medal of Honor" - their WWII action game. Maybe I'll be able to convince them to spell the name properly...

I've taken a bit of a hit to my salary and I only get two weeks holiday (yes, you read that right) but EA's Burnaby complex is only a short (and ridiculously convenient) bus ride from our current house and has a gym, sushi bar, two arcades, video game store, and tanning salon. I found the last feature highly amusing given how anaemic-looking most game developers are... at Sony's Cambridge Studio it's actually against office policy to open the curtains (I shit ye not).



Anyway, I start on Monday and I'm quivering with antici... pation.

In an almost weirdly coincidental twist, Mikala also got a rather cool job offer the same week as I did. She did a 'practice' interview the day before - at a horrid Ticketmaster-stylee place she described as a 'total shithole, with flashing neon lights in their meeting room, bars on the door, and fake wood pannelling' - so she was prepped and primed for the TWO hour interview and TEST that Suite101 did with her the next day.

She'll be Associate Editor of Suite101.com - an about.com-style web portal where curious people go to read up on any number of their 20 sections (music, film, travel, food, health, education, business etc) and hundreds of topics.

It's less advertorial-y than about.com and more creative - her job, she tells me, will be to recruit new writers (they have 250 and want to get up to 400-500!), improve the quality of the writing and tone of the site through work with the 10 section editors, and help raise the site's profile in the community and across North America through content deals, marketing and promotion.

It's a small company of 8 others, with German investors/bosses (so she gets 18 holi-days versus my 10, the jammy cow), that's been in biz for 10 years - but has a low-ish profile, though fairly decent traffic. She hopes to change the profile, obviously! It's a good package - okay pay, good holidays (as mentioned before - though how we're going to swing any vacations on this ridiculous Canadian plan is beyond us both), and has offices in Yaletown - which is heaving with cool restos, shops and bars.

In all, we've got a pretty sweet deal. And considering that December is a write-off for job hunting thanks to Santa, it's pretty amazing that we've both landed decent roles so quickly.

Which means less draining of savings, and more saving for houses.

See, we is good. In fact, we is bloody brilliant! :D

On Kultchur...

So our life here's not just about food, oh no.

We've been out a'culturin' . And here's what we've learned in the past (very busy) week or so:

1) Indoor botanical gardens are ONLY fun if they're filled with parrots. And even funner when the parrots yammer on, and say trite things like "G'bye now!" and "Bonjour!" and "Peekaboo"! And it's FUNNEST when the parrots come on a stick.
2) Van has its own world-class attraction that is a) not made of mountain and b) not boring in the slightest. It's all glass and stuff - and overlooks the entire world, it seems, from its vantage point on high in the University endowment lands. The Taylor-Folb clan took a wander to the No-Really-It's-Amazing Museum of Anthropology last week on a truly gorgeous day and milled around giant Native totem poles, bent boxes (not gay, just made of pliable cedar), sculptures and bazillion drawers (which you can pull out and sniff around in). The highlight for me was the Bill Reid Rotunda (Reid was an amazing native sculpturer) featuring one of my fave pieces of art. EVER. The Raven and The First Men postively OWNS. :-D
3) 40 minutes of radio static does not necessarily suck. My awesome friend Anne (originally from Van but working on her PHD in communications and culture in Toronto and Montreal) was in town to perform at alternative art collective Western Front's 100th year celebration of radio. Anne and her two male co-horts suspended at least 10 wind-up radios from the ceiling, plugged in to some pretty PHAT sub-frequencies and then used antennas of all sorts to pick up ambient signals to perform what seemed like an eerie visit to the inside of a submarine's radio. Neat! Plus, we got to earn cred by hanging out with "arty types".

4) No-Smoking Inside Law Helps Mikala Work Her Groupie Magic! Would be the headline of a news item on how Pavement's Steve Malkmus had to finish his fag outside the club he'd be playing at later...enabling a canny Mikala to saunter up and wish him a good gig.

5) Friend count: 2 Thanks to the awesomeosity of a work colleague back in the UcK (Dale), I have been e-hooked with two Londoners, just moved to Van in October and who are indie rock-loving, snow-keen, new media types. Went out with Beth and Simon to see the aforementioned (good) Malkmus gig and we now have plans to conquer the world! Together! And do Sunday roasts! Hurrah!

But THAT'S NOT ALL! We have more (extremely) exciting news upcoming. Stay tuned!

xM

Bringing Home The Bacon

Hello again, my Breteesh shurms!

Now some of you may be forgiven for thinking that, given the title of this blog and our predilection for stars of the 80's, we were out last night with Kevin Bacon. Those of you, however, that have been paying attention to the previous entries will not be so easily misled.

Cast your mind back to our trip to Granville Island Market and you you may recall that I had trouble finding proper English bacon and how everything in Canada is either streaky or smoked. Yuk.

Well, thanks to a little store called "The Celtic Treasure Chest", Monsieur Fry-up is back in business. Behold!

Located a few minutes drive from our house, this awesome little shoppe has all the comforts of Blighty including Vimto, HP Sauce and Cornish Pasties...

Mikala and I were over the moon to find real Bisto, as opposed to the powdered crap that passes for gravy maker here in Canada. There's even fresh Haggis. And with Burns Night just around the corner we thought it rude not to take one of the wee beasties home with us, along with all the other fine British fayre. Prices were reasonable... with the possible exception of the 400% mark-up on teabags. I believe PG Tips is known as "English Crack" in Canada. The chocolate counter has bars of every description, even some I've never heard of. No Starbar though. And they were doing so well...

Anyway, Mikala and I piled our basket full of goodies, safe in the knowledge that there is a corner of Vancouver that is forever England. Pray raise your Lilt and toast The Queen!

x

D & M

Darth Mall

So what better way to recover from the mindless consumerism of Christmas then with some more mindless consumerism? Fight fire with fire, I say. And in true North American style where else could we go but The Mall?

The nearest mall to us is a place called Metrotown. Now this place is not big... it's MASSIVE. Apprently Metrotown is the second largest mall in Canada and it makes Oxford Street look like like a narrow alley full of pikeys trying to find Shoe Express. It's a vast multi-level cathededral to consumerism with so much space you practically feel like you are shopping all on your own.

Our team decided that the best way to cover as much ground as possible was to split up into two squads. I quickly left to uncover the less salubrious areas of this new shopping paradise while the ladies went on the hunt for ear-rings and jumpers, or whatever it is girls do in shopping centres.

On my travels I came across a number of most peculiar retail outlets. There was a shop for Goths... ladies and gentlemen I kid ye not - a full shop devoted to the trappings of Cure fans, complete with large purple dragon guarding the entrance. I went in but the music started to depress me so I left shortly after.

There was a video-game arcade. Not a bad one either. Very reminiscent of Tokyo. Speaking of Japan there was a Manga shop too. I overheard one of the more spotty young nerds bemoaning the lack of accuracy on the action figures "Man, I can't believe how they've abused this TV series- she was never a ninja!" Oh, my friend, you will never know the loving touch of a woman... least of all a ninja one.

Oddly enough there was no comic shop. Clearly Comic Book Guy is not yet ready to sell out to the Big Man. More power to him.

I finished my mission by scoping out the custom t-shirt shop before we reconvened at what can loosely be described as the Food Court. I say "loosely" because it was more like a small village devoted to every kind of fast food imaginable. Again we decided to divide and conquer... Mikala went to Nando's, Ninna went to Quesno's (an up-market Subway) and I had and Arby's: this is much like a MacDonalds but instead of a "beef" patty made from lips and bum-holes, your bread besheaths a pile of freshly sliced roast beef. Yum.

After our repast a brief stint of secondary shopping ensued (in which I checked out Toys R Us and Zara) before we bundled into the Batmobile to go home and enjoy the fruits of our wallets!

Put a cork in it, Haim!

Well, it's that time of the week again.

Coupled with that time of the year again.

Not a good combination.

I am of course talking about the first Saturday night of the year. Usually Saturday is a great time to go out on the lash but, because this is January, I am on my month-long, booze-free detox.

Bugger.

Not to be a stick in the mud however, I accompanied Mikala and her old pal Shannon out to paint Vancouver red. Little did I know what was in store...

The night didn't start off well, with Mikala going arse-over-tit on our every-so-slippery stairs. The poor girl lost her footing at the top and bounced unceremoniously to the bottom, hitting every step on the way down with a bone-rattling thwack. Fortunately there are some occasions where having a big squidgy bum is advantageous and we continued on unabated with minimal injury.

And then we missed our bus.

Quarter of a freezing cold, windswept hour later another one arrived and we hopped on. When we finally got to the bar it didn't get any better.

On its website Republic describes itself as a "London-style" bar. If by "London-style" they mean "shite" then they are spot on the money. Imagine something that looks like a cool cocktail bar but has big screen sports, shit music, charmless staff and clientele who are either trying too hard or not a-fucking-tall. Rubbish if it were free, even worse if you have to pay a $10 cover charge to get in. Unbelievable if you have to pay a further $6 cover charge just to get upstairs!!!

Anyway... we sank a few cocktails (Amaretto sour for the wife, Shirley Temple for the lady) and waited for Shannon. On arrival she concurred with our prognosis for the venue and when a hen-party rolled in complete with "comedy" sex toys we decided to seek our merriment elsewhere.

Exeunt stage left.

Ten minutes later (freezing cold, wet minutes I might add) we rocked up at Afterglow. Now this is more like it.

A cool, intimate little cocktail bar twinned with what seems to be a rather swank Japanese grill house. We settled down and chilled out. About five minutes after we had got comfy Shannon received a call from one of her two Coreys and ten minutes after that, 80's child star and vampire-buster Corey Haim appeared.

Now Mr. Haim, AKA The Haimster, is a very charming man. He is also as mad as a bog-brush. Corey's ADD is, apparently, a result of a little too many recreational pharmaceuticals. According to Shannon doing too many drugs can leave your brain stunted at the original age you started doing them at. This would explain why Corey is still stuck in the Eighties (if his copious jewellery and tightly cropped hair-cut are anything to go by). And to be honest who can blame him.

But Corey has long since ditched the narcotics and we think he rocks! His favourite tipple is the B52 (another 80's classic) and he quotes Eddie Murphy (who doesn't these days).

Having made an admirable pass at our rather cute Goth waitress he lost interest two seconds after delivering his opening gambit. Mikala puts this down to aforementioned ADD. I suggested it was because Amy (for that was said wenches name) was far more interested in Mikala.

Anyway, after a lovely night watching everyone else get drunk and talk codshit, the bar shut and we (well Mikala and I) went home. Corey and Shanon partied on 'til the wee hours, but not after The Haimster had explained that we were awesome because we were real, like his girlfriend from Milton Keynes.

Not like his old girlfriends Winona Rider and Alyssa Milano, though.

They aren't real.

x

Dan.

Where Eagles Dare

The bald eagle does not look like "Sam" on the Muppets. Sam is blue.
And do you know why they're called BALD-headed eagles? Because in Days of Yore (TM), balde meant white, not hairless.

Eagles, we learned in today's wilderness lesson, are brown. With white heads. And are ruddy ma-hoosive. With wings the size of elephants. And talons that could rip up your chihuahua if you had one.

We know this because today we saw a bunch of bald eagles. In fact, we saw about oh, 100 of them.

Brackendale, just north of Squamish and half-way between the mountains of Vancouver and the HUMUNGOUS and gorgeous mountains of Whistler, is the home of the Eagle. And every January, literally thousands of these things fly in for some salmon sushi. And to people watch. 'Cos hundreds of people drive up to see them, so they stare back.
By 'Eagle Run' in Brackendale there is a long river. Across the banks are trees, herons, seagulls and other things that eagles eat. And at the last official count (which takes place yearly and is actually scheduled for tomorrow, Jan. 7), there were over 2,000 of these (insert cliche) majestic beings. And seeing so many of them perching in the branches, swooping down on the river and hanging out bemusedly, was quite frankly, pretty f*cking cool. Our only regret was that our digital camera is meant for taking good shots of whatever's 2 inches in front of us, and our 'zoom' let us down somewhat. Fortunately, we did have binoculars, and we did spot a few babies (if you could consider a 30-pound, metre-tall BEAST a baby) in the trees right above us. So just imagine our pictures are of the National Geographic sort. :-D

Anyway, after Doctor Doolittle (that's me) and her clan were wary and had seen all of birdland on display, we headed back, down through the clouds (again, literally) and stopped off at a very majestic Taco Bell.

Hell, we needed feeding too.

xM&D

New Year's Resolutions

We resolve NOT to do the following:

1. Have our best friend over from the UK (Suze) and have her discover that she likely has a nasty infection necessitating that she lie in bed for two days, having to miss out on booze, good food, revelry, what was truly the ODDEST NEW YEAR EVER and having to visit a doctor's office on New Year's Day. Woo-ha. What a way to ring in the new year! But how happy were we to have such a lovely new face about the place! The spare room is now officially called "Suze's Room" so all future applicants should apply to her. :-)

2. Drink "Guided Missiles" - a pleasing-tasting yet lethal concotion served to us by our neighbours Rob & Lola who invited us all round for a visit at some point around 11pm. Said poison included fresh orange and lemon juice, creme de banane, Galliano, vodka and Appleton Rum and Asti Spumante (a sweet fizz).

3. Puke down the side of one's own bed later.

4. Not notice how drunk our landlady and friend Judy is getting until she's rolling on the floor and claiming she wants to disrobe.

5. Miss the actual countdown by 8 minutes because a) we were too drunk and b) we have no TV channels to keep us on course.

6. Miss the Polar Bear Swim. We crumbled and couldn't be bothered with raging hangovers the next day. And it was chucking down with rain.

We DO resolve to:

1. Lose weight this year. No, we really mean it this time. We is well FAT. :-)
2. Not drink in January. Well, Dan won't. I will.
3. Keep up with these blogs - so long as you guys comment and read!
4. Keep visiting the cool Vancouver spots we've uncovered (yep, we went back to Lucy Mae Brown with Suze and hung out with Bartender Ty. And Dan had 'the best burger in the universe', which was filled with foie gras. We also found a cool tiny Japanese grill place called Zakkushi.

5. Lose weight this year. No, really, we mean it. Again.
6. Dan's going to - apparently - get a six-pack by July. And no, we don't mean beer.
7. Mikala's going to - apparently - ummm, something or other.
8. Invite all our lovely friends to come visit! Honestly - it's fab out here!

Have a tremendous 2007 y'all!

Love, Dan and Minky

The Canadian Wilderness - a post-holiday pictoral

Free Willy - and a whale.

The Mysterious Yet Pleasing Tree Trunk Where Starfish Go To Die

We are certain that this is what baby Albertan Spruce trees are meant to be used for.

Mikala has crabs.

"Deer prudence, won't you come out to plaaay..." - Comet and Cupid. Prancer minced in later followed by Vixen who ate Mikala's apples. Rudolph looked a bit wary of the whole situation.

Stick 'em up!


And to all a good night...

xM