Vancouver

For more or less as long as I've been out here, I've been planning to take some time off to visit Vancouver. Reasons being both just to experience the place, as well as visit my friend Alexandra who lives there. The fact that I've been working so much lately just made me want to go that much more, simply to have some days to relax.

I was, however, pretty uncertain about whether I would get the time off. Since we ARE working 6 day weeks that implies that giving time off is not something that can be done easily. But, luckily, they managed to make it work. So booked my room in the Hotel Vancouver (yay company perks! $70 a night? Yeah I can swing that) checked the bus schedules, and e-mailed Alex. In order to maximize my time there, I decided to catch the bus that arrived at the village at 1:50 AM, having finished work at 10:30 that same night. I show up at about 1:40, willing to conceed a short wait in order to make sure I catch the bus. 1:50 rolls around, no bus. Of course, to be expected- having taken the greyhound from Banff a couple times, I know it can be late. 2:15 arrives, and I remind myself that sometimes, it's REALLY late- I distinctly remember showing up at 2:30 one night on this bus. So I sit back and decide that at 2:30 I'll start worrying.

2:30 arrives, and I start worrying.

It's really a frustrating experience, because I would keep hearing trucks and such on the highway, which would sound like a bus, get my hopes up, and then keep going. To make matters worse, cab service stops at 2:30, so I have to wait and hope it eventually shows up, or just catch a cab ride back. Seeing as my reservation is not cancellable at this point in time, I decide I might as well sit and hope.

Finally, at 3:15am the bus shows up. I had a bunch of things I wanted to say, but I was just so happy to see it that I just sardonically mentioned "You're late" to the driver and climbed on.

It was a relatively uneventful trip, which, like with an airplane, is probably a good thing. There was some traffic getting into the Vancouver city limits, and coupled with the bus being so late, I didn't get into the terminal until about 5:30PM, Pacific time. But I slung my bag over my shoulder and headed out, getting directions from people as best I could until I found the street my hotel was on. To get there, I had to walk along something of a highway (but not really) and got to see the big buildings of the city- the GM centre, science centre balla nd all that. But eventually it just turned into a normal street and from that point it was just a matter of walking down the street until I eventually found it. Pretty posh place, that's for sure. I didn't spend too much time in the room, but it was nice when I was there- nice bed, comfy pillows and all that stuff.

So after I got my key and made my way up, I dropped off my bag, changed into shorts ('bout time!) and went back into the street. But I was not just whimsically traipsing about- no, I had some objectives first. I had to find an internet cafe, because I had to check my e-mail for news from Alex. And I had to get dinner, because I was starving.

Now, the former was more difficult than it probably should have been. First, I checked if the hotel had one. It did, but it was $10 per use. No thanks. So I went out looking for another one- the concierge said there was one underneath a big "London Drugs" store that I had passed on my way in. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that they literally meant it was on the lower floor of the store, and I ended up walking around the block and looking in all sorts of places until I actually checked the store itself. And by the time I did, the internet cafe was closed- about 10 minutes too late.

So my quest continued. Eventually I found it, and it was actually the cheapest option yet, so it all worked out. I wasn't in the mood for anything fancy, so for dinner I went just down the street to a little pizza place, which was actually fantastic pizza, especially since it was super cheap (cost me less than a meal at the bean would!). And so for the rest of the night I wandered around, checking out shops, buying some books in Chapters (For someone who's been in Lake Louise all summer, being in Chapters counts as being on vacation!). But nothing else particularly exciting happened that night, and I retired pretty early in order to get an early start the next day.

For breakfast, I went to Starbucks for a quick bite. It honestly boggles the mind how many Starbucks are in the city. I think I went into 4 different ones over the course of the 2 days I was there, though two of them were not for the usual reason of buying coffee. But I will go over that later. Point is: a whole lot of Starbucks in Vancouver.

So after finding out where I would be meeting Alex, I find out its pretty far away. But, since it wasn't for a while, I figured I could walk there with plenty of time to spare. But, in typical me fashion, I realize halfway there that I didn't bring my camera. So back I go, and catch the bus down as initially planned. Luckily, Alex and I both recognized one another when we saw each other, or things could have been strange. Anyways, we went out for lunch at a sushi restaurant, with Alex insisting that Vancouver has the best sushi (makes sense, when you think about it) and I was pretty curious myself. And you know, it was pretty good, even though I still suck with chopsticks. It was fun. Afterwards we just sort of walked around and talked, which was nice.

Unfortunately Alex couldn't really spare a lot of time, due to my rather short notice arrival and general busy-ness. But I was happy that we got to meet up, so good times all around. After we parted ways, I decided to check out Stanley Park, since it wasn't too far down the street from the hotel. Not what I expected, really. It's much less manicured than I thought it would be- it's quite forest-y at parts. I walked up to the Lion's Gate Bridge and back. Then on my way back down to the hotel, I decided to visit the mall across the street (see explanation about Chapters, replace Chapters with mall). But by this time it was getting a bit later, so I went back to my room, took a quick swim, and ordered room service. Ahh, perks again- 50% off! Totally worth it.

And so on Sunday I did a few more touristy things, like the Art Gallery right next to the hotel, and Gastown. I skipped over Chinatown though- well, I passed through it. But it gave off a distinct impression of sketchiness. So I walked down to the park by the science centre, and sat on the grass and read for a while. At this time, it was about 5:30. Now, I had originally planned to talk the bus at midnight back to Lake Louise, but decided that killing time for another 7 hours was not something I really wanted to do. So I checked in to the terminal, and there was another bus leaving at 6:30. So I decided, I think I've done what I wanted to do here, and hopped on.

And so that brings me back here. I definitely had fun, and I'm very happy I took the trip. Even just having three days off work was pretty great. A very pleasant treat.

In other news, Drew leaves on Thursday, so for a bit over a week I guess I'll have the room to myself. It's too bad, he was a good roommate. I hope we'll be able to hang out during the school year, since he'll only be in Guelph. Of course, this underlines that I don't have much time left here myself. But expect at least one more post before I leave. Until that point:

Stay Frosty
Trevor

Working at the Fairview

For the first time since I've been here, I was assigned for function help that WASN'T worse than the deli. For one night, I got to be a junior server in the Fairview restaurant. For a review (or in case I never said before) the Fairview is the high-class, fine dining room in the restaurant. Due to a combination of several juniors leaving at once and other people calling in sick, there were several people called in that night to help, 2 of which were also from the deli.

The duties of a junior server are as follows: basically assissting the full servers with things like keeping people's water glasses full, breading the table, clearing the dishes, etc. It's really not that demanding, or at least my job wasn't, because I never had more than 5 tables at a time to watch (I'm guessing they were going easy on us due to our fresh pine green-ness). But the main work was outside of the actual dinner service- polishing glasses and cutlery, moving tables around and setting them up again for the next night. Things like that. But there is one story I have to share from the night.

During the dinner service, if all the tables are currently taken care of, you can stop for a bit by the bar and have some pop provided by the bartender, Richard. Now since the fairview is right behind us, I was already on good terms with the guy (almost nothing greases wheels with people better than a sandwich!) so he and I were talking while I had my drink. We were talking about certain mixed drinks when he dashed some agnostura bitters over a drink he was preparing. Since I'd heard about them, but never seen them, I asked where you got them as I examined the bottle. He said either a liquor store or a grocery store, but wasn't sure. I then noted that, since the bottle said it was 45% alcohol, it seemed more likely to be a liquor store.

Now, I guess he had never really read the bottle that closely, because this was news to him. He took the bottle, and read the label. Then, glancing around, he poured a decent amount (not a ton, but certainly more than you would put into any drink) of it into a lowball glass, put in an equal amount of what I think was Sprite, and quickly downed the whole thing.

I have to say, his face afterwards was just priceless. His cheeks moved in the manner that denotes the tongue moving around, then his eyes widened and started watering, he bent over, opening his mouth and trying to get SOME of the flavour out of his mouth. After a fit of laughing and a quick glass of water, he choked out "It feels like I just swallowed a mouthful of liquid cloves." Definitely worth the price of admission, that sight.

But otherwise the night was pretty uneventful. I didn't spill water on anyone or make any major misakes, and things wrapped up smoothly. And I got tips too! 40 bucks, but hey, I'll take it.

So there you go- my night at the Fairview. It seems to be a pretty okay gig... but of course, you can't screw up there. Mistakes count in the Fairview in a way they just couldn't in the deli. So you need to know what you're doing. But I guess once you get there, you've got a sweet setup, cause tips there are pretty stratospheric for main servers. The server I was helping, Jean-Francois, has been here for three years- you know SOMETHING is making it worth it to stay. But I don't think I'm cut out for serving anyways- I lack the requisite balance and fine control of hands that it takes to handle all those dishes at once. Oh well.

Anyways, its getting late and I should get to sleep. The countdown is on- not much time left at all here! See you all soon.

Stay Frosty
Trevor

Update? What's that?

For those who still check this, thank you. If it's any consolation you haven't really missed much by my not posting.

But there are a couple interesting stories I've been accumulating. Owen had his friends from Toronto arrive- they've been driving across Canada in an old truck, doing odd jobs to get gas money and food, and now they're trying to get a job here. They're still living in the truck, though they hang out at Owen's place most of the time. It's a pretty good place to look for work though- if they don't get in at the Chateau, there are still tons of places hiring in Banff. Of course this is a place for my stories, but it's pretty incredible that they drove all the way out here... especially after having driven in that thing!

The last couple days have been quite fun for yours truly, it so happens. A while ago, one of the supervisors, Andrew, started organizing a beach party for the deli and IRD. Pretty much everyone signed up- that is, other than the new girls, who weren't there yet (as an update, we've hired 5 new girls so we're not completely understaffed, though most of us are still working 6 days a week). The plan thus was to have them all work the afternoon shifts on this particular wednesday and the rest of us got morning shifts, thus enabling us to attend the beach party.

Really, I was a bit sceptical as the day approached- even though its just the beginning of August, summer is pretty much over here. But we were lucky enough to actually get the warmest day in a while- I think it got up to about 23 or so, so it was pretty pleasant. Andrew brought his barbeque so we had early dinner and such. Of course, the weather here never plays nice all the time, and a sudden onset of rain made our decision of when to leave for us. But the night was not over yet- oh no.

As I may have mentioned before, the standard pub nights are monday, thursday, and saturday. But this wednesday there was a big advertisement for a retro night. Lots of people were talking about dressing up for it, which I thought about as well- but there was the slight problem that I owned absolutely nothing that even entertained the idea of looking like it was from the 80's, or 70's for that matter. I had one option- wear a particular thin, collared black sweater/jacket I have, jeans, and grease my hair to the point of unrecognizeability. Personally I think it worked pretty well, though I didn't really look like I had dressed retro, unless you know how I usually dress. But, you know, details details.

But but the time I was changed it was only about 10- far too early to go to the bar. Luckily Andrew had invited us all there to finish the hotdogs and have a few drinks before the bar. It's a special kind of intoxication you get from when someone else, especially someone you work for, lets you have more or less free reign with his bar. It's a wonderful thing.

I have to say, that night was some of the most fun I've had there. People were so tickled with their trashy outfits the atmosphere was a lot more friendly and open. And as it just so happened I met a couple people who were down that worked up at the teahouse and started talking with them. It's really refreshing to be able to talk to people who don't work at the Fairmont- plus, I think the teahouse demands being able to be friendly with people a lot more than this place, since you're in such close quarters with your coworkers all the time. As it so happens, one of them, a girl named Andy, used to live in Waterloo. I've met one or two other people from the area here but it's still funny when it happens. She also seems to have almost exactly the same taste in music as I do, which is always a great icebreaker. She and her friend had to leave early to hike back up to the teahouse, but I said I'd hike up after it closed to meet them, as they said they were planning to come back down for thursday night.

The rest of the night went well, especially when they played Fight for Your Right. Hell yes. Second best party song ever, after Bohemian Rhapsody of course.

Anyways, I had a long sleep-in the next day, seeing as I had it off. It was rather restless though, and I kept having those strange semi-dreams where I am somewhat awake, but keep thinking in mindsets like I'm somewhere else- work, school, or something like that. When I got up I saw that the rain from the night before had returned, which made hiking up to the teahouse a much less pleasant proposition, and I was considering bailing. But, as 6 o'clock rolled around, things slowed down and the rain abated. Now I really should have taken into account the fact that, as I said before, the weather is incredibly erratic here, but it honestly seemed to be clearing up.

As you can probably guess by the sandbagging there, after I got a bit more than halfway up to Lake Agnes, it started to rain. Nothing bad, and I did have my coat on, so I pressed on. Then just as I came out into the open beside Mirror Lake, which is about 10 minutes from the teahouse, it started getting heavier. And it started increasing. So for my last bit of trail, it was basically a torrential downpour, which I scurried through to get to the shelter of the house. It wasn't all bad though, as it gave me a chance to sit and chat for a while while my coat and sweater were dried over the oven. Andy and her friend had changed their minds about going down to the pub again, but Andy said she'd walk back down with me, since the rain had stopped again. Oddly enough that was the first time I've done any hiking with someone other than when my parents were here. It was nice to have someone to talk to.

But once I got down, the hike (which I did all the way to the top without stopping, I should note) plus the restless sleep caught up with me and I wasn't in the mood to go out either. So I went to bed early and got a much better sleep. That brings me to today, when I did approximatly nothing. You see, Thursday is the last day of each schedule (that was my day off) and my day off for the next schedule was the first day, thus giving me two days off in exchange for most likely having a 10 day or more stretch afterwards. We'll see if it's worth it, I guess.

One month left in Lake Louise- and I can say quite safely I'm ready to go home. Miss you all.

Stay Frosty,
Trevor