Terrible things are happening. I am having an extremely bad throat, cough and flu. I received this illness through the snow storm that has struck BC. It was cold and it affected me very much as I have no heating in my apartment. Compounded by the fact that I had no potable water to drink due to the tap water issue that lasted for two weeks since the rain fell, I have been dehydrated and susceptible to the elements and disease. I have missed work for two days already, and going on three. I have been sick for seven days. Here are some pictures from work and of the snow that has struck this city unprepared and struggling to manage.

It's snowing in Vancouver. Tada~~

The sky is vast with a complete underbelly of low-hung clouds, pregnant with chilling droplets of water. The clouds stretch as far as the horizon can see, fat, imposing and familiar. It beckons with a sense of inevitability, a baptism of Vancouver localisation.

This,

is,

Rain.

This,

is,

Vancouver.

It has been very rainy. A brutal storm slammed into the BC coast yesterday and has left tapwater looking like tea in the Greater Vancouver area. The storm stirred up the three local water reservoirs and overwhelmed the treatment system.

Even at yesterday night, it was all right. It was until this morning when I had to relieve myself when I saw tan water in the toilet bowl. I was disgusted. I thought one of my roommates had urinated and not flushed the toilet! I held my breath and sucked my belly in when I urinated. However, when I flushed, the water remained tan in colour! I opened the cistern cover and voila, it smelled like a garden. Not delicious and wonderful scents, but the smell of mud. Oh well. I brushed my teeth and washed my face as usual.

Water at the workplace seemed all right though. It's much worse only in downtown where I live. I took a shower with the delightfully earthy water. I felt like I was playing football in the rain. Luckily I don't smell like mud, even though the water smells extremely strongly. I tried to buy water for consumption, but the Safeway market had all water sold out. =( Fortunately I found some bottled water at a nearby restaurant. They were expensive though; three 500ml bottles cost C$4.

Anyway, I'll run now. Laters.

Hello everyone! I apologise very much for not having updated my blog for so long! I'll provide a terrible, uncreative, somewhat insincere and unnecessary excuse: I had been busy.

I have found a job at Lush. Lush is an international premium handmade cosmetics and soap company. The story is that it is formed when The Body Shop split a while back. The leavers decided to establish their own brand, and thus Lush was born. I am paid a gross wage of C$10/hr, not too good and not too bad. It's enough to pay the bills, and that's all I'm asking. I do not work at retail. I work in their warehouse, in their mail-order department. We, the mail-order department, are in charge of the entire mail-orders shipping to North America. So, if you are intending to mail-order from Lush to a North American address, there is a roughly 1/11 chance of me being the one packing your order. And, if your order is huge, the chance increases as more large orders go through me than small ones. It's really nice to work at Lush. However, the journey each way takes me about 1.5 hours. The bus ride is not long. It's the bus waiting that is. I take a total of 3 buses each way, with a fair amount of walking too. =(

One thing I have noticed about Vancouver warehouse jobs is that, you'd better remember to bring lunch. Yes, like what we always see in The Simpsons, the worker brings his own lunch. Sure, there is a lunch room, but there are no food vendors there, selling hot, delectable and economical food to you. There is a snack and drink machine, but that's it! You bring your own sandwich like Mr. Homer Simpson does. If you don't you can take a really long walk to the nearest fastfood where you can spend an exorbitant amount of money for unsavoury food that will ultimately fail your heart. Also, lunch time is only 30 minutes so there isn't enough time to go shopping for food. BRING YOUR OWN LUNCH.

There are nice and interesting folk where I work. There's Kate Rissick, the white Canadian girl of German ancestry. She has a pimp mobile. Unfortunately I don't have a picture of it now to show you. =( It's a 70s light blue Chrysler. It is huge and it loves gas. Some other things she need to complete the picture are: black skin, ghetto speak, bling bling and a couple of homies in the car. She loves obscure punk bands -- obscure at least in my eyes. Bands with names like Skinny Puppy.

There's also Caroline, the teenage punk rock rebel former Avril Lavigne fan who knows all the most horrible-sounding songs I have ever heard in my life. They're mostly rock by the way. Her secret fetish is some of the Lush products. =D Not so punk anymore!

There's also Mark. He's from the Canadian Interior. He's from Alberta. He came to the west coast just last year, like me! His mom stabbed him in the leg once with a fork when he was 12 because he won't get out of bed. No wonder he moved out. His mom also called him "shit for brains". Once, twice or many times, I don't know. It's a good thing he moved out.

There are also some other characters whom, either I am too lazy to write about, or are just too plain uninteresting to write about. I think it is more of the former. =/

Ok people. I will keep you updated with more pictures... I really should work harder to provide a Vancouver experience to those visiting this site. As a reader, I know it is annoying not to see updates when one is expecting it. I will work harder for my blog! Seeya all next time!

This is a typical bus in downtown Vancouver. Recently they upgraded their fleet to include these new Europe-vogue buses. They are completely electric and are powered by the electric grid above them through their tail appendages. These electric buses break down very often but are repaired very easily. The old ones break down at an average of 1-2 per hour. They break down when their connectors get disconnected, which happens very easily. However, I haven't seen any of the new buses break down. They are definitely much more resilient than their predecessors. These buses are also very quiet, which is good. They do not have much seats inside, giving way instead to ample standing room, which is good as these buses run only in downtown, which is a small place and thus passengers do not spend too much time on their downtown bus journeys.

In Vancouver, all petrol stations have a mechanism in the price display stand that allows for the automatic manipulation of gas price displays. Some newer stations feature digital LCD displays. This mechanism exists because of the constant price changes of consumer petrol in Vancouver, to the extent of hourly changes. Here is a picture of a Shell display stand, and the same stand 2 minutes later.

Here are some pictures I took in Richmond. Richmond is a neighbouring city of Vancouver, but don't let the "city" term fool you, because in North America cities sometimes sit side by side, and the distance from Vancouver downtown to Richmond downtown is just around 20-30 km. Vancouver has lots of immigrant Chinese from Hong Kong who still have a deep Hong Kong root. Richmond should not be confused with Chinatown, as Chinatown is just a small two-block locality in Vancouver downtown, whereas Richmond is a whole city. In the centre of Richmond, probably 1 in 2 people is Chinese. Also, one generally refers to "downtown" as the Vancouver downtown, not any other city downtowns.

This, is Flaming Wok. It is a Chinese fast food chain along the lines of McDonald's in terms of business concept, but it serves Chinese food! It is run by Chinese and patronised by Caucasians and all other races alike. It is quite original Chinese food too. This branch is located on Robson St downtown and my 2-serving combo cost me around C$5++. The vegetable beef stir fry was not too bad, but the spicy pork was horrible. I don't know if it was an authentic taste as it tasted a little sweet, probably a Westernisation attempt.

Hello everybody!! Welcome to my brand new blog for the brand new me! This blog will be mainly about my experiences and feelings in Vancouver, and reports of some local news. As you can see, it has started raining in Vancouver, and once it starts it doesn't stop! The rain is also very cold.. Like 10°C. It can go on raining for 28 days straight without a pause! Isn't that something? And the rain here isn't like a tropical thunderstorm; it's much lighter. It's quite annoying indeed, like sleeping next to a radiator.

This blog will feature lots of pictures! It's for anyone who is interested in Vancouver and what goes on here! The pictures you see in the left are taken from my bedroom window! Isn't my room big and nice? I'm so pleased with it! The best thing is that it's right in downtown, next to a wedding chapel, next to a super nice and big park with lots of free tennis courts, and I'm just paying C$295 for a private room! Wow! Now that's something to be shitting about. Yay. All right, I will go grab some more fascinating news to keep your attention! In the meantime, ciao!