Bad time for a fire drill

May 8, 2006 - Tagged as: Vancouver, Work

At approximately 2:45 am last night, the fire bell started ringing. I was feeling sort of sick anyway, so I was not impressed. At 2:45 am on a Sunday night, I would prefer if the fire bell didn't ring unless there are plumes of black smoke and an uncomfortable amount of fire in my immediate vicinity.

Of course there was no fire. Now I am at work, semi-sick and very tired. Add this to the fact that I have nothing interesting to do right now and you have the recipe for a bad day. Only 2.5 more hours until lunch.

3 brims are better than one

April 17, 2006 - Tagged as: Vancouver

While I was sitting on the bus on the way to work today, a guy got on who was wearing not 1, not 2, but 3 hats. The guy looked like he was homeless, but that still doesn't explain the 3 hats he was sporting. If you're cold, why not wear a toque?

Why are there so many homeless people in Vancouver? I have two theories on this.
Theory 1: There is insufficient social support to help get people in need back on their feet.
Theory 2: Vancouver is warmer than just about any other Canadian city, the social services are as good here as anywhere else and drugs are readily available. That makes Vancouver like Hobo Club Med.

When I was in Seattle two weeks ago, there weren't nearly as many homeless people, so that makes me think that Theory 2 might be correct.

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.