hollowsolid: March 2006

Rainy Sunday evening in Vancouver. Just back in from spending the day travelling round the city like Seamus and Maimie, the up-for-anything OAPs. See, M buys a monthly commuter ticket to get her over and back to work. And come Sunday the bearer of a monthly travel pass is entitled to bring another adult and several small children with her on any Skytrain, Seabus, or ordinary bus for free. Today i was that other adult. We're working on the several small children thing. Ended up out in Simon Fraser University which is up a mountain in the suburbs of Vancouver. As if education wasnt difficult enough. We took some photos, had coffee and mushroom soup and then we bussed it back down again sitting on the back seat with our shared zimmerframe, sucky sweets and bulletproof glasses. This fine young man dressed as a wrapper - I believe they're called - got on several stops later with a recently acquired Cadillac car sign dangling from his neck. Nothing too crazy about that if several stops later his "friends" didnt get on and take the high piss out of him for being too gangster. Fisticuffs ensued. His friends got off at the next stop. I offered him a chewing gum which he bewilderdly accepted and that was the end of it. A real Wrigleys moment.

The source of the sucky sweets.

It was still raining when we got back into town so we went underground and did the full loop on the SkyTrain. Seamus and Maimie havent had so much fun since before their hip replacements. We ended up out on Commercial Drive again and had dinner in a Vegetarian Indian place which smelt like a damp caravan. But the food was the tastiest and cheapest we've had in a long time. Commercial Drive is like the Rathmines of Vancouver. Very studenty (we spotted a couple of young unwashed with rucksacks full of freshly laundered clothes (pure conjecture) on their way back from being home for the weekend). The lamposts are covered with pasted up signs for gigs by obscure bands and bizarre happenings like "Surrealist Anarchist Jamborees" (I shit you negative). Loads of Rastas wandering around aswell - they always say hello to you. I think it must be part of their religion to be really friendly - or maybe they're just very stoned. Lovely fellas anyway.

Ollie from Kilkenny (Kilkenny's Lenny we call him - very similar temperament and drinking ability to one Alan / Lenny / Leonard / "Jim" McGuinness from Costa del Sallins Co Kildare who is with us here in Vancouver) picked me up yesterday to go driving in his 1977 Plymouth Volare (pronounced Vo-Lah-Ray) estate. Blue Thunder he calls it. Its 5.4 litres of raw gas bill. He picked it up for $900 and its nothing if not completely hickey. Vancouverites shave their legs and have their Hummers and Beamers polished daily to cruise up and down Robson wearing their designer shades and playing Michael Buble and James Blunt on their state of the art sound systems. Here's Ollie's two fingers in the air to Vancouverite's perception of cool.

An uninteresting aside by way of a social observation - Canadian pedestrians wait at pedestrian crossings until the little man turns white regardless of whether or not there's traffic anywhere in the vicinity. A local told me that people here used to jaywalk like crazy people. But that was before the Hummer became popular. Or maybe it was before Ollie acquired his Volare. He drives like a Kilkenny hurler on a solo run.

Ended up out in Horseshoe Bay - the spot where the ferries leave for the islands. Most scenic little village I've seen yet. reminded me of the Beachcombers. Am I the only one who remembers the Beachcombers?

We'll be getting our ferry from there to Victoria (main town on Vancouver island and the capital of BC aswell) on Good Friday. Both of us cant wait for the break cos we've both been working extra hard and, despite our interesting and damp location, work is work and sometimes a holiday is in order.

Then the next break is the Sasquatch Festival down near Seattle at the end of May. Theres a big gang of us heading to that, myself, M, Louise and Stephen, Ciara (Maccon's sister), Jackie - the Toronto Rose and the two Kilkenny boys Ollie and James. Ollie wants to hire a Winnebago "like the one in Meet the Fokkers". I smell chaos. But good natured chaos.

In other news Quattro on 4th the place we went for M's birthday just won the best Italian in Vancouver award. So all you prospective visitors rejoice - its top of the list for scran. And they fully take Irish credit cards - in fact they prefer them. Also The Strokes are playing in May and we picked up tickets for that aswell - so more music to look forward to.

Marc Doyle mailed me last week asking our permission to use one of the photos which he took at the wedding in Confetti Magazine.

We said Hello! have first dibs on it but we haven't heard anything back from them in over 6 months so I reckon there wont be any problems.

And finally - Ollie thinks that Vancouver is so expensive that the BC in Vancouver BC stands for "Bring Cash". He might not be wrong.

Exhibit A - our savings so far :)

Note there's a lot of Euro coins in there aswell - only because we cant seem to shift them over here!

So that's it for another 6 weeks. Feel free to leave the odd anonymous and scathing comment aswell. It makes the whole thing a little bit more interactive.

Rafters.

I thought it might be a good idea to post up a quick reference so everyone knows what we're up to for the next few months and what visitors are due when etc. I'll update this as and when there are any changes aswell....

Easter.........................S and M go to Vancouver Island (sorry P)
20th-27th April....... AD's post exam retox
26th-29th May.........Sasquatch Festival WA. AMERICA!
15th-25th June.......Lin and Si Shannon
7th-14th July...........K and F go to Brollywood
15th-31st July.........M&A Dug
August......................S and M go camping in the Rockies
Sometime in Oct Hopefully........The Ks

TBC................G&G and Ava
TBC................Chardle and Nonee
TBC................Matt Jooner, Niamh and Baby