David Frey's Waste of Tubes
GoesToEleven.org
Back to the big smoke
August 2, 2004 - Tagged as: Vancouver, Work
I'm moving back to Vancouver in September for another co-op term with VTech. It was a good experience last time, so I am expecting it to work well again.
Lauren is starting school in fashion design in September so we're moving in together. It's sort of insane, but it's very convenient. As long as Lauren cleans up a few times during my four months in Vancouver, it should be better than my last experience living in Vancouver.
This brings us to yesterday. Lauren and I got up stupidly early so we could catch the 7am ferry to Vancouver to look for a place to live. We had a few appointments setup throughout the day, but for the most part we just ended up looking around. Luckily for us, there are bajillions of apartment buildings in the Marpole area, so we just wandered around there. Actually, that isn't entirely true. The first place we checked out was a bit further east on Knight st. The area is disgusting. There is garbage everywhere. It was really hot and loud as well. It looked like we were in the bad part of town from the movie Falling Down (which is a kickass movie by the way). I would say that the weirdest thing about that location is that as soon as we stepped off the bus, we were struck with a smell that was undeniably hamster piss.
I have decided that one way to judge an area is to get on a bus and see how badly the people smell who are living there. By this measure, Knight st. was not a good place to live. Here's another way to check. Ask the landlord of an apartment about Internet service. If they say something like "Hmm, I'm not really sure. I think there's someone in the building with a computer.", then you probably aren't in a good area.
After a stinky bus to the Marpole area, we 'talked' to a number of landlords who had vacancy signs posted out front. Talked is in quotes because a lot of the time, we asked questions and had no idea what the people said back. We started to have better luck later on. We found a place here that we both liked. It's not too loud, looks very well maintained and there isn't any bus upholstery for carpet (since it has hardwood floors).
Lauren has dubbed our time in Vancouver as the "Lauren and Dave Experiment". Hopefully it will be a success.