Work, work and more work...

That is what life seems to be all about at the moment! Since I finished all my exams (all went well, I even passed Spanish and walked with an A average for the year) I have been working at a restaurant down on Kitsilano Beach called Watermark. It has been going well, all the staff are pretty cool and the place has a view that is hard to beat. Every night there are the most stunning sunsets, the sun falling behind the mountains and the light reflecting off the water... Beautiful. But as ever, if you spend long enough in one place you start to get a little jaded, and seeing as I spent 101 hours there over the past two weeks I am feeling a little over it! But having said that, I gave my notice on Saturday, so I only have a couple more weeks there before I am off and away.

Plans are all starting to fall into place, Simon and I are heading to Seattle on the 25th of June for a few nights, to party it up one last time before we head our separate ways back to Aus. It has been great hanging out with him over the past year, a really solid guy who I look forward to seeing more when we are both back in Aus. I then fly on to Chicago to catch up with my friends from the Dave Matthews Band shows at the Gorge (see previous posts) as one of them is having his bachelor party there. I'm looking forward to that, it should be awsome to see Chicago and we're gonna hit a baseball game and a few other quintessentially American things I think. Good times. From there I fly on to Montreal, which I am really excited about. Sim is there now and says it is amazing. I can't wait for the food, and I may have to relent on my determination to not drink coffee until I get back to Aus! I have about a week there, with one night in Quebec City. Hopefully I'll get to catch up with a few friends from Uni there and I am there while the Jazz Festival is on so am hoping to see a couple of shows too... It's going to be great!

From there I fly back to Van, have a day to do laundry and gather myself together before the day that I have been looking forward to for a while now... Tess arrives here on the 10th of July, which is going to be amazing. We have heaps planned already and it looks like it could be quite a busy few weeks!

So those are my plans, but I have also been doing some fun stuff, believe it or not! A couple of weeks back my mate Sebastian and I had a final day at Blackcomb, which was fun. The snow was decidedly slushy but we had a good day. While waiting for the Gondola to open we saw a young Black Bear rummaging through a rubbish bin, and then another while we were on the way up the Gondola - so now I don't have to see any more bears thank you very much! It was great to hit the mountain in the sun, and I must admit that we stopped often for a beer and a relax in the sun!

A couple of weeks before that I went to Victoria with Simon and a couple of other friends Maria and Becky. It was a slightly spur of the moment trip, but all organised by Sim which was awesome. We stayed at a little hostel and lived it up for a couple of nights! Basically we got off the ferry, dumped our bags and headed straight for a patio to drink beer in the sun! It was just what I needed to do after a couple of intense weeks at work, and really good times with Maria, who has also become a good mate, before she flew back to Sweden. Walking through the harbour the next day I spotted something in the water, which turned out to be a Sea Otter, just cruising around, foraging for food and playing in the water. We stood and watched it for a few minutes, and while we were there a Sea Eagle of some kind just dropped from the sky and scooped up a fish, right there in front of us. It was amazing to see that kind of wildlife right in the harbour of the city. The rest of the day was basically spent hanging out in the sun, talking to seals (that apparently understood Swedish) and then having some more beers! Dinner that night was amazing, in a little place called Ferris Oyster Bar, fantastic seafood, simple and not overpriced... Love it! Victoria was on the whole fantastic, great shops (found some good t-shirts and a nice vintage Speedo jacket!), good food and good company! I spent maybe too much money, but that is par for the course at the moment!

Apart from that, I have just been catching the odd live band, saw Ozomatli a couple of weeks back, and a local band called Hey Ocean twice recently which was great. Off to another gig next week, a band called OAR who I came across seeing DMB last summer, which I am looking forward to seeing in a small venue. Catching Melbourne band Architecture in Helsinki this week with my friend Sebastian which should be cool - I never saw them in Melbs so it is quite funny to be seeing them here!

Other than that it is work work work! Fourteen more days of that and then off and away again, I can't wait. I hope all is good in your world, maybe I'll be seeing some of you in the next couple of months... Take care and stay in touch!

There is no logic in my Logic Board...

Hi all, so the end of term is drawing ever nearer, I have only three more classes left of my BA, and on Easter Sunday my lovely little iBook decided to crash... I only lost the work I had done on two end of term papers, and possibly all my photos from this trip, but hopefully not! I now know to back up! It looks like it is the Logic Board that has gone, so hopefully the Harddrive is still intact. I'll be buying an external Harddrive very damn soon! Ah well, all these things work themselves out, and I am now in the process of negotiating with Apple to see if I can get it fixed under warranty or not - as well as negotiating with Profs for extensions on papers!

Other than that, we had an amazing day at Whistler on Good Friday, the snow was slushy but the sun was shining and we just had lots of fun. Good times. It is sad to think that the season is drawing to a close, but the sun makes up for it! I also got two jobs and a place to live last week, which is a big relief! I may cut back to one job once I have started them both and got a feel for them, or I may do both and just rake in as much cash as I can for the summer! I'm going to be living in a little house just off-campus, on a lovely tree-lined street, and it is dirt cheap, so that has worked out well.

The cherry blossoms have just started to now fall off the trees, so we have shifted from having beautiful aromas to having pink snow on the ground! I have only one more day of classes, then on Thursday afternoon is 'Arts County Fair' which is a big concert/party put on here at campus, supposed to be one of the biggest campus parties in North America - should be fun. De La Soul are playing, which'll be sweet. Friday I start my new job, at a place called Watermark, check it out here. I've also been offered work here (it's called Bridges), which looks potentiall really good if they offer me the gig upstairs in the actual restaurant, as opposed to the Bistro downstairs. So that will all work itself out, and hopefully I'll have time to hang with mates and chill out and enjoy the city as well! I'm sure I'll manage to juggle it all!

Apart from the computer crash Easter was good, had yummy Turkey dinner on Monday night thanks to Kat and Chrissy, which was gold (oh and Jovan's Cornbread was excellent too!!). Nice little study-break that was. I hope you all had a great Easter and are back into the swing of things wherever you are.

Anyway, I'd best dash off and get some food before my final Spanish class. All done with exams on the 25th of April, then move into my new place on the 1st of May. Take care, out for now...

Hometown Baghdad...

I've just got back from class and was talking to a class mate over a quiet lunch-time beer about the Baghdad Burning blog that I've recommended you to, and she told me of another, called Hometown Baghdad, which you can find here. This 'video blog' is a collection of home-video style documentaries that discuss life in occupied Baghdad. As you can probably tell, this issue and media has really captivated me, and I thought I'd share with you! Please if anyone has other similar sites I'd love to see them... OK time to go job-hunting! It is a beautiful sunny afternoon, I've just got an invite to a wedding from one of my best mates Scotty, and am feeling particularly far away from home right now as I'm not going to be able to make his wedding... These things happen I suppose, I just have to be philosophical about it and realise that everything we do means that there is something else that we can't do! On that note, time to go look for a job!

So much snowboarding...

I'm sitting here in my bedroom, the sun is shining outside, the hunger in my belly is growing, but I thought I'd hold on for another few minutes to write my blog, which I have been neglecting recently... So the end of term is nearing, only another week or so of classes, then two weeks of exams, then it is all over, red rover! So what have I been up to? Well, that is a good question... Basically I realised a few weeks back that since just before Christmas I'd not had a weekend where I had spent the whole two days in Vancouver. I have been going snowboarding at various different mountains all over BC, with different mates and the crazy and awesome rabble from the UBC Ski and Board Club. This club organises four trips per year to different mountains around BC, and 50-odd 'kids' jump on a bus, drink out way to the mountain, party it up, stumble onto the hill the next day and fly down way-too-steep hills, back to the bar, more partying (maybe with a hot-tub thrown in there for good measure), and then do it all again the next day, jumping back on the bus and arriving back in Van late Sunday night, tired but in a good way! Over 'reading break' (a week-long break in the middle of term) they organise a big trip, which this year was to the Rockies, and was perfectly amazing! A really nice bunch of 30-odd people, two amazing mountains Kicking Horse and Panorama, lots of fluffy white stuff, and a good good time... See my flickr site www.flickr.com/photos/licksflicks/ for pics of that trip, and other randoms from other mountains... Yes I apologise, there are rather a lot of pictures of snowy mountains up there, but that is kinda symptomatic of what I've been doing this term!

Last weekend my mate Sim and I went to Vegas, both for a bit of respite from the Vancouver rain, and also as a form of pilgrimage to see the Dave Matthews Band... It was a great weekend, awesome to get away and not, for one moment, think about schoolwork, wander around in shorts and t-shirts, gamble a little, drink a little, eat a lot, and get blown away by two awesome nights of music. I really have been lucky to have seen some incredible music on this trip. From now 6 nights of DMB, to Gomez, Jurassic 5, The Cat Empire, Johnny Lang, Maceo Parker, Ray LaMontagne, The Fray, and local Van Bands like Hey Ocean and 5 Alarm Funk (check out their myspace sites, Hey Ocean particularly are great)... Live music has rocked my world, but I've also had a great time at some DJ's like Kid Koala (like a symphony orchestra with turntables!), Krafty Kuts, and Shy-FX... Good times.

I'm starting to get my life organised for the summer, I think I have a house sorted through a girl who is in the Ski and Board club, pretty cheap and in a good spot. Hilariously it looks like Sim has hooked up a house in the same block as me, totally randomly and unintentionally! I can't wait for summer, to get a job, and just live in this city for a while, instead of being stuck out on campus the whole time.

Well right now I need to get to class, and get out into the sun for a while! Just quickly, any of you who (like me) are a bit tired of the media representations of the Iraq War, and are interested in checking out a different perspective, head over here and have a read. "Riverbend" is a 24-year old Iraqi woman who writes on how it is to actually be an Iraqi woman in occupied Baghdad. It is fascinating reading, and I would strongly recommend back-reading the archives. Other than that, I'm also reading a book called 'Fugitive Pieces' by Anne Michaels for my course on Holocaust Literature, and it is a beautifully written book. Again one I'd recommend seeking out. More on that next time. I'm listening to the new Gomez album, 'How We Operate' and it is great. Also loving Jose Gonzales, his album Veneer is really chilled... OK it's 10.30, I have class in 30 mins and I need breaky and a coffee before then! Hope all is well in your worlds, I'm really going to try and do this more regularly from now on... Take care wherever in the world you are, and stay in touch!

Christmas, New Year and lots of snow!

Hey everybody, this'll be very short as I am sitting using the internet at the UBC Lodge up at Whistler after a great day's snowboarding...

I hope that Christmas was as good for you as it was for me, had such a great time with an awesome crew of people in a small town in the south-east of BC called Nelson. Seven of us, (3 Aussies and 4 Swedes) drove over to Nelson on the 20th of December, and spent the next 10 days skiing and boarding, eating, drinking and generally having an awesome time! We skiied a tiny little resort called Whitewater, with only two archaic chairlifts, but really nice people and so much awesome snow. The landscape was stunning, snow covered mountains merging into beautiful green trees, cut through with bubbling rivers.

After ten days there (and two Christmas dinners!) we headed back to Vancouver on the 30th, getting the rental car returned with only 5 minutes to spare. My New Years celebrations were somewhat stunted by work, but I still managed to have a glass of bubbly at 12 and a few beers after!

On the 2nd Simo and I headed back up to WHistler, to find it raining and generally not very nice. We took that day as a day off the mountain, and yesterday only went up for a few hours. Today, however, was awesome. We found some nice fresh powder, and I managed to make 'fresh tracks' with both my board and my feet after I crashed and had wo wade out through knee-deep powder!

SO we are back to the mountain for a few more days this week, school is back on the 8th, which is also my 25th birthday! Crazy!

I'd better dash, Simo needs to check his email, hope all is well, will post some pics etc soon... Ciao for now, Al.