Mark and Andrew's World
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Apartment Hunting in Vancouver
May 10th
To all those trying to find an apartment in Vancouver: be prepared to be hunting for a while. I’ve been looking for an apartment in some capacity since January, and I’ve yet to find one. Seriously. And it’s not like I’ve got unreasonable demands such as granite counter tops, stainless steel appliances, and a whirlpool tub with separate stand-up shower all for under $1000.
Nope, all I’m asking for is an apartment with a living room, a bedroom, a bathroom, a kitchen, decent flooring, clean walls (I can paint out of my own pocket), natural lighting, unobstructed 7 foot minimum ceilings, and a landlord who understands the Residential Tenancy Act. (Though I’d like to point out that I had an apartment — yet I lost it because the person whom I was depending on to be my reference chose not to answer the phone because it was a “weird number” and thus made me lose the place of my dreams — remains to be another post regarding mobile etiquette.)
Ideally this place is close to transit, and within the Lower Lonsdale, Main Street, Commercial Drive, or Burnaby Heights neighbourhoods.
I think over the next few days I’ll post some ridiculous stories about the hell I’ve gone through to find an apartment in Vancouver, and some of the incredibly weird demands and requests I’ve received from landlords prior to renting/viewing.
Over five years of blogging
Nov 9th
I’ve been blogging for over 5 years — my first post was on August 19th 2002 at 1 pm. It was a useless meme post. The meme result? I was an “Aragorn-wantin”-Legolas — no real surprise on that one back when, and no real surprise on that one even now.
I’ve a new project for my blog which I think would be interesting (having found a theme that I think I can live with for the next several months). Five years is a long time, and it would be neat to consolidate all my posts that I want to be public into this blog. This means two Livejournal blogs, two wordpress blogs, and a brief encounter with Blogger rolled into this single blog. With well over 500 posts this should be an interesting project of self-discovery. Or it could also be another attempted internet project of mine abandoned.
Abandonment confirmed.
In ‘x’ days
Aug 30th
Soon I will be out of my sun room in downtown Vancouver, no longer only two blocks from Granville and Robson. I find it distressing that I will no longer be nearby everything, including a place that has become my local: Johnny Fox’s beside the Royale at Granville at Nelson.
“But the time as come,” the Turtle said,
“To move to better things;
To Rez, and class–to SFU–
Where Sunday means something–
And where Chartwells doth suck so much–
Thank god you’re not in Burr again.”
I get to move into Townhouses! Yay! Not only do I have control over a thermostat, I hear that there is sound insulation in townhouses. And a kitchen. And I’m also thankful I’m not a CA… but that has nothing to do with where they’re placed, it’s the “image” they have to maintain.
Lich Observatory and the subsequent fire
Aug 23rd
Nothing much was planned today: just a simple trip up to the Lick Observatory on Mount Hamilton. A simple trip there, a relaxing tour, and a simple trip back, minus the switch-back road that climbs approximately 4000 feet. Nothing major planned, eh?
Well, plans are quite interesting. We get to the Lick Observatory, which happens to be the oldest observatory built on a mountain, and we missed the most recent tour. (Tours are informal, and frequent — they start whenever someone has the time and someone arrives. The observatory isn’t that frequented by visitors.) Because we missed the tour, we ate our lunch that we picked up at Trader Joe’s in an alcove inset with a statue of some Reverend who helped out the astronomy program.
We went on the tour, which was encredibly informal, and was more of a questions of curiosity thing for me. “Why isn’t the floor flush” and what not. Quite an awesome place to be, and if it wasn’t for the copious amounts of physics that are currently beyond my grasp — I could call the place home. The original telescope is the one we initially viewed, built in 1887.
My mother wasn’t up for the journey to the other side of the compound to see the reflecting one. My father and I journeyed and half way to our destination and alarms started to go off, then the “air raid” siren kicked in. Apparently there was a fire at the incinerator. Figuring it was going to be easily solved, my dad and I just continued to our destination.
After being somewhat disappointed with the view, we returned and only got half way seeing my mother somewhat alarmed. She saw the fire and it looked a little fierce for her comfort. None the less the moment we saw the blackened field it made perfect sense.
I’m not going to describe what exactly happened, but there were two CDF Fire Observation Planes, one CDF Helicopter, the Observatory’s fire-truck, and numerous other fire-trucks that showed up. We captured two water drop runs on video, and picked up two beautiful photographs of other water drops.
Leaning against the railing at the top of the Observatory I remarked to lady who gave us the tour, “hundreds of millions of dollars in lenses, and photographic equipment, but nobody here has a camera.” Everyone who was up at the Observatory and not fighting the fire asked me to send the pictures and the video. I’ll be doing that tomorrow sometime during the day. I have plenty of video to upload.
Finally, because of the height of the observatory, the sun’s rays were hotter, and I was baking. I thought it would be cooler than Sunnyvale. I was very wrong.
So, that was the beginning of my day. My mother thought that we wouldn’t be let down the mountain, and with my brother at school and no emergency contact to pick him up, we needed to be at the house for 16h40. We arrive home with 40 minutes to spare at 16h00, and the bus shows up. Christ! The bus was forty minutes early. That is horribly early. My mother was none too pleased, and will probably make a complaint to the school trustee, because when my bother isn’t early the bus ride to the school that is fifteen minutes away takes ten minutes shy of two hours. Egad, and I though the 680 was bad back in Ottawa.
Below is a link to the gallery with better, and more, images of the fire. Tomorrow I upload the video I shot on my trip to San Fran, and the video of the fire-fighting escapades. My San Francisco trip seems less of an extravaganza now.
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| Mount Hamilton Brush Fire |