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.