Getting Closer to the Move Here

So here we are, back in what we hope will be our new home. This time Van­cou­ver is once again cov­ered with many dark clouds, but instead of con­stant rain, it’s far more like Seat­tle rain, which has usu­al­ly been light sprin­kles inter­persed with tan­ta­liz­ing patch­es of sun­shine.

We land­ed and got through cus­toms by about 3:00 Van­cou­ver time, or 7 PM our body clock time. Pam had tak­en a slight­ly ear­li­er plane than I did, so she picked up my bag and wait­ed for me for about an hour and a quar­ter.
So, what do you do when you see a patch of blue in a week fore­cast­ed to be anoth­er mon­soon? Get thee to the park, of course. We took a bus from more or less the cen­ter of town to Stan­ley Park, which was clear­ly wear­ing it’s spring out­fit. We took a short walk and vis­it­ed the edge of the aquar­i­um, where Pam played with one of the seals, and we also saw some beau­ti­ful bel­u­ga whales, swim­ming like pale blue ghosts in their pond, the ponds they have at this aquar­i­um are incred­i­ble. If you’d like to build a pond of your own, vis­it Swell UK to find all of the infor­ma­tion need­ed to main­tain one.

We are going to spend a lot of time in that park. I can see mak­ing a park vis­it my week­ly Sun­day after­noon, and look for­ward to the day when I can hang out there with oth­er fam­i­ly (my broth­er, sis­ter-in-law and niece, for a start).

Today it was also part­ly cloudy, so after some arrang­ments for an inter­view with a recruiter, we took the Sky­train in a large loop to the East (went as far as Sur­rey, the end of the line), and then back again. Pam got off at the water­front and I came back to our hotel.

I real­ly like this hotel, the Sand­man Suites on Davie. It has near­ly every­thing I need in a hotel, includ­ing the most impor­tant lux­u­ry: a kitchen, com­plete with stove, pots and pans, dish­wash­er, uten­sils and plates! It’s also in a ter­rif­ic neigh­bor­hood, full of restau­rants, cof­fee shops and stores. So break­fast was home-cooked, and there was an organ­ic gro­cer and 24-hour reg­u­lar gro­cer with­in a 2 block area. Two doors down was a Star­bucks for cof­fee grounds for our cof­fee-mak­er, and next store to that was a superb bak­ery. Pam chose a seed bread, which they sliced thing for us. It is won­der­ful. We also got organ­ic sal­ad, straw­ber­ries and plums. Today I picked up a tru­ly mag­nif­i­cent papaya and some nice tan­ger­ines and tangelos.The hotel staff has also been extreme­ly help­ful and pleas­ant. I can see return­ing here for our next trip.

Besides being thrifty and healthy, this kitchen and bed­room set­up real­ly feels like we are start­ing to ‘live’ here, rather than act as pure tourists. Toward that end, we treat­ed our sky­train trip as a sort of Real Estate tour, tak­ing notes on what neigh­bor­hoods looked good, which high-ris­es were going up, where there self stor­age places are (and where the IKEA is). If I can just line up employ­ment, I think we can look for­ward to a real­ly nice life here. After all, what’s more to life than a pret­ty pub­lic park, fresh cof­fee, good bread and a high-speed Inter­net con­nec­tion (albeit in the ‘busi­ness cen­tre’ near the front desk) and cheap mod­ern fur­ni­ture? Please, dear read­er, don’t answer that.