a week

Holy Moley! It's been a week since I updated this Blog. What a busy week!

We got a Wii! I walked into the shop on Wednesday last to check what time they are open at (because we were going to get up early for Thursday to get one if they had one) and they said they had 6 in stock! So I took one! It's class! Wii Sports is soo much fun and we have been making Mii's of our friends and some Famous ones as well! This has been taking up a lot of time the past week!

I've been working my ass off! Worked every day last week, but I had Thursday off to head up the mountain for a bit of Skiing! I didn't mind working my ass off because there is so much to learn in the shop!! So this week have 3 days off, and mostly evenings for the rest of the days, so there is LOADS of time for the slopes!

Yesterday I went to the dentist. I had a sore gum at the back of my mouth between my teeth. So I needed someone to check it out! It's a real fancy place, LCD's on the ceiling! I left the place $76 down, 3 prescriptions in my pocket for about $35 and a appointment for next Monday for a $570 operation to remove my left wisdom teeth. Oh joy!

Besides that, nothing else is happening here in Whistler. Were off to see Casino Royale tonight, because at the Village8 cinema Tuesday night is the cheap night! YAY!

geared up

A quick nod towards Robin over with his Geared Up Blog. He launching his new domain this week and has this Widget that shows the content of his blog! Check it out!

rogers chocolates

I started work today.

It was so much fun! I started at noon where I was introduced to the shop, and we moved on to the till and all the regular products! Learning all about their Victoria Creams, Empress Squares and Almond Brittles, not forgetting the Gourmet Bars and Truffles among other things!

It seemed like information overload! Kinda reminded me of the first few days I spent at KISC! Good fun :-)

So some customers came in and I helped serve them, learnt how to greet them and interact with them. The type of shop that it is means that it's not like any other shop in Whistler. It is an old school shop with that old time feel. Calling people Sir and offering samples. The best thing about the shop is that nearly everyone who comes in wants to get chocolate and is really happy about it!! In turn, its easy to be happy to them!

I'm really looking forward to working there for the Winter and the working times fits in well with the Skiing times!! Olé!

canada eh

I suppose it is time for an update! Here we go!

I finally got myself a job! I'm working in a Chocolate Shop in Whistler Village, and I start my training tomorrow! It will be evenings and weekends type work and it will allow me a lot of time for skiing and snowboarding.

The snow situation here is shocking. Last week there was a huge dump of snow and it was going so well that the mountain decided to open up early on Saturday! We were in Vancouver on Friday for the night, so didn't get to go on the slopes till Sunday. Walking to the bus and to the gondola in the rain wasn't very reassuring one bit, but once we got to the top of Whistler Mountain the snow was lovely (for early season snow that is!) and everything was good! Got a run in and then the winds started! It was like a blizzard up there, white out! You couldn't see a thing and it was so windy you could put your arms out and get blown to where you wanted to go! (as long as that was the direction of the wind)

All the lifts were then put on standby as they were getting thrown around too much, so we decided to head home and call it a day. After all we had 6 months on the snow!

Besides the uneventful trip to Vancouver this weekend, we haven't been up to much! Gotta go now and get some sleep for work tomorrow!

wii

We just rang (at 10pm) the local video/dvd/game rental/retail shop here in Whistler. Asking what the situation with the new Nintendo Wii is tomorrow (as it goes on sale tomorrow!) The lady at the end of the phone told me some things I didn't want to hear.

1. They are starting to sell the Wii at mid-night
2. There is already a queue outside the shop
3. They have a limited amount of Wiis to sell
4. The number of people in the queue already outnumber the amount of units they have
5. They are unsure when they will be getting another shipment in
6. Next possible date is Thursday 2 weeks the 30th of November

I did not like that news. No Wii for us and we were looking forward to it soo much!

The funny thing is that we were in the Village earlier this evening and were going to pop into see if there was a queue in case we needed to join it. But we thought sure there will be LOADS, first thing in the morning will be loads of time to queue up and get one. We were so wrong!

dang snow

A comic from one of the local news papers. Taidy was going to cut it out, but I knew he wouldn't get around to it, so I just took a picture of it!

twitter

I signed up to Twitter yesterday. Basically it's:

A global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question:
What are you doing?

You can answer this question and keep everyone who is a friend up to date with what you are doing at once. Sign up and let me know what you are doing, or check out what I'm currently doing: twitter.com/darran

There is a nice little bit of code as well that I added to my blog that tells you what I'm currently doing.

rock shandy

At home my drink of choice is usually a Rock Shandy, a non-alcoholic half-and-half of fizzy orange and lemon soda.

Ever wonder where the name Rock Shandy came from?

A former Managing Director of C&C, Mr. Frank Murphy, was a member of the Blackrock Swimming Club that used to go swimming in the open sea baths in Blackrock. After training on a Sunday morning they would go to O'Rourkes pub in Blackrock for a drink. Their favourite drink was a combination (shandy) of Club Orange and Club Lemon from whence came the name, Rock Shandy.

Cantrell

Now at home sometimes I get my rock shandys with red lemonade instead of either the orange or the lemon. I don't know why this is or what the correct name for it is either. But it is usually a Cork or Munster thing... strange that!
So when I ordered one over here, I recieved the worst rock shandy ever, the Canadian version (in the Irish pub... the Dubh Linn Gate... no less! tsk tsk)

gadget on website

Following on from my previous post on how I made my first Google Gadget, it has graduated and passed all the necessary tests. It is now available for everyone who searches for 'webcam', 'kisc', 'kandersteg' among other things, and they can add it to their own Google homepage! And people have been adding it from all over the world! Canada, United States, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Estonia, Japan and Spain to name but a few!

With the gadget in the directory, it also means that its available for people to "add it to your website"!! When you do it, you can put it anywhere, it will look like this:

hug a bear day

Happy Hug a Bear Day! On this day you can do stuff like:

• Give all your teddy bears a great big hug!
• Line up a variety of teddy bears, notice the different sizes, textures, etc.
• Find pictures of as many different kinds of bears as possible.
• Act like a bear.. crawl on the ground, catch fish, find and eat honey, sleep, climb a tree. See how many you can think of.
  

via Letters from the idiot

Ok, what a nice day. Normally I wouldn't be too bothered about this sort of stuff, but me being in Whistler... and this is Bear Country, how could I resist celebrating it! Here in North America there are bears, lots of them... and especially here in Whistler! There are notices and information about Bears all over the place here warning and informing you all about living in Bear Country!

So today I'm going to be on the look out for real bears in my back garden to I can go out and give them a huge hug!! I might even get a picture with one?!

canada

I have arrived in Canada! My first time leaving Europe (if you don't include the trip across Istanbul to Asia... which I am counting, so its my second!) and my first long haul flight! It was myself and Conor who went from Cork with Aer Lingus to London Heathrow and onto Vancouver with British Airways.

I had my rucksack, Ski and Boot bags and carry on bag. Conor had his carry on bag, suitcase and snowboard bag. Our limit was 2 pieces of luggage and we were allowed carry an extra bag for ski's or snowboard (and boot bag). So we could of had 2 pieces of luggage each AND ski & boot bag or snowboard bag! But no... that wasn't the case... The Aer Lingus lady charged us €30 each for the carriage of our ski's and snowbaord! Even tho Conor was only carrying 2 pieces of luggage and within his limit, and all i had was 1 boot bag extra.

Aer Lingus were totally unhelpful or understanding where we were coming from. It was a code share flight, basically a British Airways flight operated by Aer Lingus. We had no problems in London because we were always within our luggage limits! Its just Aer Lingus being stupid. I will avoid flying with them again.

Besides that, everything went great, we arrived in Vancouver Wednesday. Eventually found the right bus to our Hostel, Hostel International Central on Granville Street. It was a really nice place. Good atmosphere! The free breakfast in the morning was worth while getting up for! They also have free Internet access (if you bring your laptop!), bring an Ethernet cable in case all the table are taken!

From there we went to our SWAP orientation meeting where we learnt all about living in Canada and what to do and not do while we were there. We sorted out all the paper work like applying for our Social Insurance Number and sim card. We then went off to the Bank to open our Canadian Bank account in TD Canada Trust! It was actually weird opening it. We were brought into an office and this financial advisor started having a conversation with us! Interested in us and how we were before we even started talking about opening an account! Home in Ireland if we went into a bank looking to open an account we would be asked to fill out this form. Totally different!

So after lunch and the collection of our sim cards for our phones we made our way to Whistler. It took a bit longer as it started to snow that day and the bus driver had to take his time! We were met by a not as hairy, but still quite hairy Irish, Scottish, Canadian! There was a nice dusting of snow from the first day of snow that day, making the place have that wintry feel.

The next day we explored the village and did some shopping. It has been raining ever since and now all the snow has washed away. Everything is just wet now!! But at least i will get to see the place without snow before the heavy stuff arrives! The job search starts on Monday and i already have a few places in mind, like the Irish Pub! Who know, but keep your fingers crossed for me! I'll keep ya posted!

halloween

So this year I finally got off my ass and got dressed up as the Video Game Character I look regularly look like; Gordon Freeman.

As it is kinda hard to construct an environmental suit from scratch, I decided that I'd go as lab coat wearing Gordon. People have made environmental suits before, but its far too much work, especially considering I'm off to Canada the next day!

• For the lab coat, Eric lent me his. Thanks Guy!
• The Crowbar was easy. There is a Superman toy with a bendable crowbar and that shouldn't cause a problem in getting into the club.
• I wore a black and orange jumper, to stick with Mr. Freeman's Colours!
• The lambda (λ) symbol and the I.D. Card were printed off and laminated at home
• Finally the glasses are those cheap ones Department of Social Welfare Glasses thanks to Conor!

Some other Pictures from Halloween:

Ian as Sam Fisher and Simon as a Cereal Killer

Mezer and the Boy Wonder

Sandy as Sandy

Eric as Ken and Footsie as Ryu from Street Fighter!