A Two Year Anniversary

While Pam and I have always celebrated our wedding anniversary in August (it will be 17 years, this year!), we also now celebrate another anniversary today, which is the date we settled here in Vancouver. Back in 2005 we arrived here with a bunch of suitcases, an inflatable mattress and blanket from Target in Bellevue and a couple of laptops (including my ancient Tibook, not quite ready to retire).

It hasn’t been quite long enough for those first few weeks and months to take on the glow of ‘cherished memories’, but they weren’t all that bad either. It did take an extra 3 or 4 months for our furniture and other belongings to finally make their way here from Boston (with quite a few broken items), but we made do, camping out in our nearly empty condo and furnishing it for the summer via a couple trips to IKEA and Canadian Tire.

This evening we took a walk along False Creek, just like we did regularly in 2005. Sometimes two years feels like a short time, and sometimes it feels like a long time ago. So much has happened, and so much as changed, that I’m thinking it’s the long time ago feeling for me. No regrets, though (we both agreed).

Vancouver Gets its 15 Minutes of Fame in the New York Times

…or rather its 36 hours. The New York Times Travel Section has devoted this weekend’s 36 Hours in [Your City Here] to Vancouver. I found the opening paragraph particularly interesting:

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, is two cities rolled into one. For outdoorsy types, this western Canadian city is a nature paradise, with miles of scenic hiking trails and bike paths that sweep along the Strait of Georgia, the pine tree-lined waterway that connects Vancouver with the Pacific Ocean. For urbanites, Vancouver is a sophisticated destination, with thriving immigrant enclaves, an ever-expanding restaurant scene, quirky neighborhoods, distinctive shops and lively bars that party all night. Part of the fun is weaving your way through Vancouver’s two sides, and realizing that’s why the city ranks as one of the world’s most livable places.

Since I often refer to the city’s dual nature (although my duality is more about Summer Vancouver vs. Winter Vancouver), the outdoorsy vs urbanite split also works and fits neatly into those two seasonal characters as well.

I can’t say that they visit the same spots that I’d go to with limited time, but they hit a few (the Granville Island Public Market and Jericho Beach), toward the end. (The 36 hours are up? Damn, it was just getting good!) Also, the picture they use at the beginning of the article is, I think, one of the city’s most photogenic spots: one of the views from under the Granville Bridge, just as you approach Granville Island that includes the marina, the city and the mountains. Whenever I pass that point, I try to stop for a moment to take it in. Of course, you usually have to stop these days due to the crowds, and this article is probably not going help. Oh well…

Thanks to my Aunt Mary for being the first of what I expect will be many links from the East Coast to this article starting today…

No iPhones for Canada for a Long Time

An article in the Vancouver Sun talks about out what I’ve known since we moved here: Cell phone rates, particularly for data, are unbelievably expensive here, so an iPhone would cost $100 a month just for the data portion (not the talk portion), and it wouldn’t even be for unlimited data!

Apple is not going to do a deal with a carrier with that high a price tag because almost no one would buy it and they would look elitist (not to mention, users would be unwilling to use the web browser for fear of running up a higher data bill). Unless there is some real arm-twisting, the iPhone won’t be here for a couple of years.

Just to see if I could find out anything more, I called up Rogers, who is my cell phone provider. Back in April, another blogger called them and they told him:

Rogers will be carrying the iPhone and will actually function as the exclusive Apple iPhone carrier for the nation of Canada.

This time, the rep I got (after what felt like an interminable series of robots) said the party line was ‘no information is available about the iPhone’, and I told her that she might want to pass on that this article had appeared today, which would sour a lot of customers.

I’m not Jonesing for an iPhone, but I have to admit, the nearly daily crashes of my Treo 650 are getting old pretty quickly. Not to mention how dorky I look every time I head out of the house with my brick of Treo on the left side of my belt and my iPod on the right.

Back and More

I’m really tired as I write this - it seems I’ve been tired a lot lately (lack of sleep perhaps due to the unusual hot nights we’ve been getting this week, etc.). Nevertheless, I wanted to try and update this blog before it got much more stale. And it was getting quite stale indeed. No crunch left at all. (See, I told you I was getting tired).

So what has happened in the past 3 weeks or so?

1. The rest of the trip went without any transportation problems (aside from a couple of hours on the runway at Laguardia, but from what I hear, that’s par for the course for most US travel this summer.)
2. I got to hear my Nominative Prelude: Castles in the Air played by the pianist to whom it was dedicated, Pat Plude, and it was a great experience. It’s been a long time since I’ve heard anything that I’ve written, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I have to try to write more music. It’s just a hard thing to do, requiring a lot of time and energy, so I think I’ll only do it, for the time being, unless I know I’ll get a performance. I have enough unperformed music (an Orchestral Tone Poem, a couple of chamber works - one for Violin, Viola and Piano, a short work for Piano, Celeste and Vibraphone, a study for 2 pianos that I wrote in college, and a half of a Chamber Opera - all that have never been heard outside of my mind or their notes banged out in a practice room or piano somewhere) to last me for quite a while, thanks.
3. I saw a few old friends at the Walden School Reunion, but surprisingly, the years that I attended (the late 70s) were somewhat underrepresented. I saw plenty of people who were older than I was by about 20 or 30 years, and also several who were 20 years my junior, but few who were my age. It made for a unique social situation.
4. I had a great time visiting my parents, and was able to enjoy some quiet hours surfing the web on their back deck. Warm, breezy afternoons in the shade with hummingbirds and wi fi, as well as gourmet meals (both out and at home) are what I will remember the most from this trip.
5. That missed opportunity on the road was yet another of those times in life where you think you’ve missed the boat, only to find a much better vessel float in behind it. Yes, another opportunity presented itself a week and a half ago. I had an interview at IBM (yes, that IBM) for a 6-month contract as an Information Architect/UI Designer. There was a message from them in the affirmative before I made it home from the interview (!). A new record, the guy at the agency placing me said. So in about 11 days, my life changes significantly, as I say good-bye to my current part-time employer, and hello to a new contract in Burnaby. It’s a bit of a distance from here (about an hour’s commute on the buses and skytrain). Hopefully I’ll be able to use that time to catch up on podcasts and books on tape. Too bad that I can’t compose on the skytrain. I think I’ll dedicate my next blog posting to my old employer, who deserves some mention (I’ve always been really careful about the work vs. personal life vs. loud murmur thing.)
6. We celebrated Canada Day this year with some (temporary) tattoos of the Maple Leaf (see above). We’ve even had a chance to celebrate my new contract with a lovely dinner at Bridges with a view of the sunset.

Have I gotten caught up? Well, a few other things:

In 4 days, we’ll have been living in British Columbia 2 years. We took out a 2-year mortgage on this condo, so with any luck, we’ll be all paid-up in about 6 days. We haven’t thought about a mortgage burning party (It sounds so wonderfully 1960-ish, doesn’t it?) but maybe we’ll do that.

The time spent traveling truly showed me that I do indeed belong here in Vancouver. Despite some nice experiences on my trip to the Eastern US, I did really miss this place, and was extremely happy to return to the beautiful city and mountains I now, without any doubt, call home.