Memories flow

One of my favourite memories from University is of a spontaneous trip to London to receive the gift of a free car. Naturally I have many other memories of drunken escapades, throwing flour around kitchens, sitting on roof tops drinking sweet Swedish cider, and organising, promoting and filming amateur boxing matches for no apparent reason. This incident however is one that lives in the memory and never fails to bring a smile to my face.


I thought about it again today at work, and decided it was about time to write it down, for sentiments sake. I remember the weather in Southampton, where I did my degree, being decidedly mild for what was winter at the time. I had been chatting to a good friend of mine who I knew through my various dealings in car owners clubs. (Anyone who knows me from back in the UK will know I was rather involved in collecting, restoring, and destroying cars in my younger years. The number of cars I’d owned or co-owned by the time I was 22 was the on the ridiculous side of 30. But I digress.)

So it was a mild late-winter's day. I`d been chatting to my buddy Marc, and now was on my way home from University. As I strolled down the damp street towards the T-Junction that led to the apartment I rented with two friends, I felt my phone buzz in my pocket. It was a text from Marc. ”You want a free car mate?” it read. Me? Free car? What a ridiculous question. I responded. It turned out that Marc had been offered an old BMW by a friend, but was lacking the space for it, so he got in touch. Not one to turn down an opportunity like this I contacted the owner and said I’d get the train to London to his house the following morning. He`d get rid of the car. I`d have a new project. Perfect.


It must have been a Friday, or having said that, any day of the week (since we were students after all) – as my friends and I were drinking that night. I’m not a big drinker, especially not these days, but for some reason my final year at University was strewn with excessive amounts of liver abuse, and abundant instances of post-alcohol bed-ridden syndrome. I’d booked a train ticket to London for early the following morning. Maybe I was being too optimistic.

The new day dawned, and with it, my hangover. I tried to get out of bed, but realised after one step that this was a bad idea. I was forced to run to my trash can and filled it up with the previous night`s beverages. Not the best start, I thought. Contacting the owner of the car I explained myself and my current plight. I was met with uncontrollable laughter on the other end of the phone, and he agreed that it might be prudent to catch a later train, and see him in the afternoon. I went back to bed.




Later on in the day, about 11:30am, and considerably more pilled up on paracetamol than before, I made my way to Southampton Station, and caught the train to London Waterloo. I enjoyed the train ride immensely, as it gave me time to gather my thoughts, get over my hangover, and play with my new toy – a Nikon D50 digital SLR camera. It had been raining and dull for a few days previous, but today the sun had come out from behind the clouds, and the sunlight reflected off the puddles on the pavement, and beaded off buses, trains, and buildings. It made for a great first photography adventure.

I knew I was going to Hounslow, a borough of South West London, but that was all I knew. I`d never been there before. Entering our nation’s capital for the first time in a couple of years was an interesting experience. Being on my own that day meant I could appreciate the sites of the old city all the more, with no distractions. I was in awe of the sheer scale of the city, the Victorian-era smog-stained buildings running parallel to new, shiny developments, and the incredible convergence of railway tracks at Clapham Junction. I`d always come to London by rail from the north before, so coming from a southerly direction, and seeing all the sites from this angle was new and exciting. Everything was so big, developed, industrialised, but with that run-down, ramshackle charm. Here was England.


I arrived at Waterloo, and somehow navigated my way to the correct underground train to get me to Hounslow. I enjoyed getting on the old Tube network, and working out how to navigate the spaghetti-like maze that is the Tube map. The map has become legendary these days. It`s reproduced in all manner of ways for your enjoyment – on posters, T-Shirts, postcards. You name it – the tourist can buy it.

Arriving in Hounslow the train left the depths of the underground, and breached the surface. Again I was bathed in post-rainstorm light. It was a quiet afternoon when I stepped off the train. I remember being the only one on the platform. The feeling of being in such a huge city, but being the only one around was strangely comforting. I took a few more photos, and wormed my way through the terraced streets of the urban sprawl of London to the car owner`s house. I got the keys, filled in some paperwork, and drove back to Southampton.

Edging Closer

Another day at Mink Chocolates. It's 10:30am. I've been at work for a few hours already, and the last of the 'morning rush' of regular customers has left the cafe. I'm on my break, sipping a Vanilla Latte. I think about the order of the day.

Lorraine comes in at 7:45am every day and has a large Costa Rica coffee. June, Angela and Idah order regular sized Americanos, a single shot Latte, and sometimes a couple of Dark Chocolate Fruit Parfaits. The Australian couple who live in Lions Bay will come in, order two large Mochas, and read the paper for 15 minutes, before wandering off. Terry has a regular latte in the morning, a regular Costa Rice in the afternoon. Latte Mike has a Latte - with skim milk, usually.

This is just part of the pattern will continue day after day. Week after week. Month after month. The longer serving members of staff at the cafe can often have a regular customers drink ready and waiting for them before they've paid for it. Sometimes before they're even in the door. Working in a coffee shop is fun - you get to know your customers very well, some of whom we now consider friends in their own right. I've met some extremely interesting people here. However after almost two years of it I'm about ready for a change.

There's an envelope addressed to me on the counter. It's from the Canadian Consulate General. "Thought this might be important", says my boss, Marc. He smirks. Important it may be indeed - it's four months since I did my medical exam for my immigration, and I've heard nothing. Is this what I've been waiting for?

I go into the back room and open the envelope. It's a letter with instructions on it. "We have now completed the initial assessment of your application" it reads. I peruse the rest of it. I'm told that there's no need for an interview, and I don't need to provide any additional documentation. What I do need to do, however, is provide $490CAD for the 'Right of Permanent Residence.' With that paid, and mailed by Express Post to my visa office things are looking good. Hopefully I'll have a passport request within a few weeks, so that the immigration officials can attach an immigration visa to it, and sometime early in the new year I'll finally become a permanent resident.

Things I miss about England

Clearly, there’s a reason why I didn’t return to England, after my year in Canada was up. I found that Vancouver was a place that suited my idea of a great lifestyle perfectly. It was, I thought, pretty much paradise.
I’ve always liked the idea of being outdoors. In the year following the completion of my journalism degree I spent a lot of time cycling, walking, hunting down saleable items in automotive junkyards, and just generally trying not to be nailed to a computer screen. It worked, I had a great time, and my eBay flogging of seemingly useless car parts meant that, at least for a while, I did not have to get myself a ‘real’ job to supplement my chosen lifestyle.


Fast forward three years and I’m in Canada. I still spend a lot of time outside, but now I spend it doing different activities. I still cycle as much as possible – my precious antique 10-speed road bike is my livelihood. It gets me to work and back, and was given to me by one of my first friends in Canada, Andrew, and until recently it cost me next to nothing. However, when things started to fall off it at will I decided it was about time to spend some of my hard-earned cash on the thing. $200 later and I had a bike that ran smoothly, and didn’t make a huge amount of ridiculous creaking noises.

Besides my cycle commute, I’ve been spending a lot of time in Vancouver’s undeniably brilliant backyard. The mountains are just begging to be hiked up, so as I mentioned in my previous post, I’ve been spending time with some friends climbing the peaks visible from the city. It’s an achievement to conquer any of them, be it a smaller one with a well-worn trail such as the Grouse Grind, or one that is more challenging, such as the epic, all-day hike that is The Lions. Scrambling through snow to get to the top, only to discover that there’s no tread left on your hiking boots for the way down is an amusing experience. I’ve yet to try a full weekend hike, such as the trail that leads from Cypress Mountain, which overlooks West Vancouver, to Squamish, half-way to Whistler, but hopefully I will be able to find enough time, and enough friends, to join me on that at some point.



As good as all these things are though; there are still a few small effects that I miss from my home country. Apart from the obvious things such as friends and family, the good old fashioned English country pub is one of them. There’s nothing better than sitting in a beer garden, cold beverage in hand, waiting for a hand-crafted doorstep sandwich to arrive, with chips (not fries) on the side. Preferably this would be by a river or lake, it would be June or July, and you’d be surrounded by old stone houses and fields filled with sheep. A few cars, and maybe a tractor, would pass, but generally there’d be the sweet sound of the English countryside. Some dogs would be heard barking in the distance, there’d be the soothing sound of distant conversation from a picnic bench opposite, and the trickling, peaceful backdrop of the brook flowing on down to the seaside somewhere on your left flank. The birds chatter excitedly to each other, and the waters shimmer in the sun.

Other than that there’s the cider. Cider is one of those drinks that offers instantaneous, joyous refreshment, after a long day of studying. I remember back at university in Southampton, heading to our local pub, The Giddy Bridge, with my close friend Luke, to have a pint or two, and talk over all things ‘Uni’. It was final year, and we had a lot of work to do. Really, we should both have been studying for our dissertation projects – assignments so huge that we were given a full year to complete them. I did mine in approximately eight weeks and did fine, but that’s another story. Anyway, the gratification of wiping the condensation from a chilled glass of Magners or Kopparberg, taking a sip, and talking about Wolverhampton Wanderers flirtations with promotion, and mediocre footballers, such as Arouna Koné, really capped off a day well.

Cider in Canada, however, just doesn’t have the same effect. It feels like a fizzy soft drink. So artificial. So acidic. It just isn’t the same. During my early days here, I tried to drink it, but ultimately turned to beer. As Billy Currington once sang: “God is great, beer is good. People are crazy”. Well Billy, I agree with you on about two thirds of that, but as good as beer is I just don’t enjoy it quite as much as having that special fruitiness in my drink. Bud Light with Lime just isn’t the same, sorry Bud.


Another thing – football. As good as it was to be able to watch the recent World Cup in South Africa, it doesn’t match Saturday afternoons in the pub, Magners, and Manchester United about to put four past Fulham in the English Premier League. It’s known as the EPL out in Canada, and that’s fine, but I don’t enjoy having to get up at some unearthly hour on a Saturday to catch the game. I manage to watch Match of the Day most weeks, thanks to the Internet, but it’s not quite the same experience as watching a live game unfold. Hopefully things will change with the Vancouver Whitecaps making their presence felt in Major League Soccer (MLS) in the new year, but I’m still not sure on the quality of the game out here, Beckham, Marquez, and Henry aside. Time will tell I expect.


Finally, there’s the English countryside. It seems like all I want to do is sit in a pub in some small, unfathomably remote village somewhere, watch football, and get plastered on cider; and I’m sure I will come Christmas, but there’s a certain charm these things have separately too. I used to love cycling along the old Roman roads just outside my home village of Middleton. The roads were narrow, the trees and hedges enveloping the tarmac, the sun’s rays streaming through them. Maybe you’d see a couple of people on horseback, riding to one of the endless fields around the area, or a fox skulking across the road ahead. It was just always a tranquil time to experience. Those days of limitless time. Endless freedom. Once I get my fix of these typically English things at Christmas I’ll be back in Vancouver, ready to complete another season of snowboarding after work, and every possible weekend, and once again be ready to jump off high objects into the waters of the Pacific Ocean when summer rolls around. Two years is a long time to be away from home voluntarily, so the Christmas trip back to the motherland will be one of great adventures, reviving old memories, and becoming refreshed once again.

Progression. Finally.

One thing I've learned from my time in Canada is that emigrating here takes a long time. More time than I'm particularly happy with. I first decided I wouldn't mind settling here in Vancouver just a few months after initially arriving, way back in June 2008. Now we're half way through the summer of 2010. I'm still shy of the finish line.

Since starting work at Mink Chocolates, in January of last year, life has been aimed at one goal: permanent residency. I think it's important to have some targets to aim at in life, to challenge yourself, and to keep yourself motivated. This is mine.


Back in 2006, sitting in my dorm in university, I heard that the next African Cup of Nations football tournament was to be held in Ghana, in 2008. At that point I decided I would go, and I did. It was a great experience to go somewhere that at the time I knew precious little about, and I felt I'd achieved something special. Following that trip I needed to find new direction. I'd graduated university almost a year earlier, and so decided it was about time I explored a new part of the world. Enter Canada.

After a few months of temp work, and selling broken pieces of car on the side, I had enough money in the bank to get on a plane and start my new adventure.

My life has been extremely happy since relocating to Canada. I've made many friends, found a new love, spent huge amount of time pursuing leisure, and my ultimate goal of permanent immigration moving closer. It feels like I'm finally nearing the finish line.

I first applied for permanent residency when I became eligible for it, in March 2010, and finally I received word in the mail yesterday that I'm due to take my medical exam - to ensure that I'm fit and healthy, and won't be a long-term burden on the Canadian health system. After this things should be about done. It's the final hurdle.

The whole process, from start to finish, has taken 18 months so far. But to be able to stay in a place I consider awe-inspiring is certainly worth the time invested. As I write I'm sitting in a park, basking in the glorious summer sun. To my left are the skyscrapers of downtown Vancouver, and to my right are the shimmering waters of the Burrard Inlet. In the distance I can see North Vancouver, flanked by the majestic Coast Mountains. In the summer I hike them, and in the winter I snowboard down. What else could I wish for in a city?


Once immigration is complete, it will be time for the long-overdue trip back to England, where I've only been for two days in the past two years. Tissa and I will be getting a flight back for a few weeks around Christmas. Tissa hasn't visited the UK before, aside from a fleeting stopover visit to the airport, so it will be a great opportunity to play tour guide, coupled with seeing family and friends.


Also, we plan on moving in together, and are in the process of securing a house to rent. The one we've found, owned by a friends father, is in a suitably leafy neighbourhood and has ample DIY potential. My dad would love it.


With summer being upon us I've recently been able to experience some of the extraordinary hikes on offer, in the mountains that surround Vancouver. A few weeks ago my friends Berta, Chris and I set off to 'The Chief' with a view to hiking up. We decided that the trail would be far too easy to follow, so made our own way up. There were sheer rock faces, exposed ridges, thick pouches of trees to fight through, and other obstacles, but most of all was the spectacular view at the top. Our hike up left me with aching legs for almost a week. The adventure however was definitely worth the pain.

I've set myself another goal for summer now - cycling from Whistler back home. It's a fair distance through the mountains and down the Sea-to-Sky Highway, but it should be fun, and another good challenge to beat. Hopefully next time I write, it will be as a permenant resident too.

Vancouver Olympics - epic times, great memories, high-fives

I don't think I've ever high-fived so many people in such a short time. It was Sunday 27th February, and Canada's hockey team had just won Gold against bitter rivals the United States, in the 2010 Winter Olympics. Canada had looked set to beat their southern neighbours in the gold medal game at a canter, before the USA tied things up with a mere 24 seconds remaining. The once jubilent Canadian fans in the pub we were at suddenly fell silenced, with the few Americans in attendance jumping for joy at Zach Parise's late goal. Proceedings would now go into sudden-death overtime.

Fortunately for the Canadians, the underperforming, but undeniably brilliant Sydney Crosby found his shooting boots, and scored the winner less than 10 minutes into overtime, sending the whole of Vancouver into raptures. People once on the edge of their seats jumped for joy, strangers hugged and screamed unfathomable screams, beer spilled, and everything was better.

We left the pub shortly after, and tried to get along Broadway on the 99 B-Line Express bus towards downtown. The street, one of the main ones in the city, was blocked though, with joyful locals blocking the road and playing street hockey. The police were on hand, but let things continue. This was no time to be strong arming. The time to celebrate was here.


Downtown was a sight to behold. Granville Street, the main entertainment street in Vancouver, was awash with celebration. The vibrancy of Vancouver's Olympics shone through, with almost everyone wearing the red and white of Canada. Security Guards left their hard veneer at home, carrying with them smiles, welcoming waves, and joining in the universal high-five marathon. People climbed on top of bus stops and up street lighting to get a better view of the crowds of celebrating people - Canadians and foreigners alike. There was no choice in which way to walk. The tide took you to the next location. Vancouver was a hive of activity.

Two days later and the city was once again empty. The Olympic Juggernaut had left the city, leaving with it only the remnents of the games - the signposts and advertisements, tourist info plaques and transport information.

One legacy of the Olympics was the incredibly mild weather preceeding and in the duration of the games. Authorities worried that the temperatures would spoil the conditions, and things got so desperate that snow was flown in to blanket Cypress Mountain, as the Olympic runs were barren, rocky, and green. Cherry Blossom, normally flowering in mid-April, was out before the end of February. It looks like it will be another hot summer.

When I first arrived in Canada I never even considered the possibility that I might be in Vancouver for the Olympics; but looking back now I couldn't even imagine life without them. Ever since I got here the talk of the town was the impending start of competition, with businesses flocking to the city to invest, and city authorities spending billions of dollars on infrastructure, to cater for the hundreds of thousands of extra visitors coming from all corners of the globe for the 2010 showpiece.

Now we are left with the benefits. The Canada Line Skytrain - a fast Metro link to the Airport, is a godsend for commuters to downtown from the south of Vancouver, and tourists from the airport. Roads have been resurfaced, more buses added, and many Skytrain Stations have been redeveloped.

There will be many pitfalls to come though. The games were countless millions of dollars over-budget - something that tax payers will be taking the brunt of, and there was the added controversy of native Canadians and their supports arguing that the games were held on stolen land, and events were damaging the environment.

Ultimately though, 99% of people I spoke to had the time of their lives during the games. Many people who opposed them beforehand had amazing experiences. I know I did. There were endless free events around for locals to take advantage of. Many many musicians from across Canada flocked to the west coast city to play free concerts - many participating countries had 'houses' where people could go and drink and be merry, and the mood around Vancouver was excited, but friendly. I know I had an epic two weeks and many many memories that will last forever.