Thursday, March 29, 2007

Newsflash - My friend Prasad is now a Dad

Prasad's wife Swathi just gave birth to a 3kg boy at 3:32am.

Yeay.

Wife and baby are fine.

Sunday, March 25, 2007

Gee its all happenning here with the sport


Well its been a few weeks since my last post. Reason being nothing much has happened. Except for rain, rain, and more rain. I have reached my saturation point. I'm over rain.

But I knew that about Vancouver when I committed to it. It rains here, and I'm accepting it and moving on. I wish though that it would keep it to the weekdays. For once I'd like to go skiing on a Saturday. After all I did buy some new ski stocks, and brought my snow gear over here.

Anyway this evening was one of the highlights. Another Ice Hockey game. Vancouver vs Colorado. It was a ripper. Only one fight to report. And that was in the first 2 minutes of the game.
Below is how it ended. (Of note this is my first attempt at a You Tube video connection so please understand if it doesn't work.)




Yep that's right Vancouver lost in a shootout.

Anyway to share the excitement of a hockey game I'm also adding the introduction to the games and a few random photos. It's part of the spectacle.



Anyway thats all for now. If anyone is missing me, send money. If not send money anyway. I'll take good care of it. Really I will. Hockey games aren't cheap.

Sunday, March 11, 2007

Counting down until I need to be in Vancouver again

Hey I don't know whether many people are keeping up with this but Vancouver has their own countdown clock for the olympics.


The olympics website is
http://www.vancouver2010.com/en

So what does this all mean for all my readers. Well it means you only have about 1090 days to get your sponsorship money in, to send me to the Winter Olympics. In return for your sponsorship money you will get the return of having sent Chad a long way away again, and photos of several Olympic events. I am accepting sponsorship monies from today via direct deposit. Bank details are available on request.

Thou Shalt not not make definite plans without consequence

Yes I have learnt my lesson.

As you may recall I used my last email to set in my mind plans for this weekend.

Well the good news is that I was able to hold myself to those plans. Even if it meant getting up early on a Saturday morning to catch a bus to Cypress Mountain Ski Resort.

Well anyway the result was, I should not have made such plans for this weekend. Or another way of looking at it was, one should always look to the snow weather report in the morning if you plan on going skiing.

Why, you may not need to ask, but I will say anyway. Cause if it's pissing down rain, no-one should be skiing. And boy was it pissing down. Check out the photo below taken at about 11am in the morning. Boy wasn't that a wonderful session of skiing.


Anyway it fined up a bit. As you can see from this 2nd photo. And no this photo wasn't taken much later in the afternoon. This photo was taken about 12:30pm in the middle of the day. It went from horrible to miserable. Hence I forced myself out for a 2nd session of skiing at that point.


Cypress is one of the 2 ski resorts very accessible to the locals in Vancouver. It in fact takes only about 1/2 an hour to drive direct to this resort. It isn't huge but is bigger than the closest runs at Grouse Mountain. It offers night skiing until about 10pm at night but yesterday the lights were valuable to just be able to see. With all the rain, fog, and generally miserable conditions any light was good light.

Second lesson from yesterday I learnt was when you read the snow reports, also look to the temperature. 25cm of snow may be a very liberal interpretation. Especially if the temperature is only borderline negative. It might be hiding the fact it was actually just more rain.

So today to make up for the fact I was drenched yesterday I have decided to stay in. There's been back to back NBA basketball games on TV, and I'm able to sit in front of it while typing this. Ah the joy of living in an apartment again.... Plus it's pissing down again outside. I don't want to get wet today.

Before I go I'll also post another photo of the Vancouver.

At dusk from the Granville St Bridge towards the Burrard St Bridge. I took a walk over there on Friday night as there are several ski stores over that side of the bridge. I needed to pick up some ski poles for yesterday. Now I need to make sure I make use of the poles before the rain washes all the snow away.

Thursday, March 08, 2007

Recent Photos

Yes I've been a bit tardy with the photos recently. But I'm making it up to you all.

So what's the difference between living in a hostel vs the share accommodation I now have. The answer is space...

I mean sure my space currently comes with its own personal photos of people I don't know, but hey thats not the issue.

We have another weekend coming up... Surprising to some but we have many of these every year. And well this time, now that I'm nearly over being sick I'm going to try do some skiing. I didn't haul my skis down from the mountain for nothing. Or well this message will try to hold me to that thought. That and these photos from the other weekend up at Nakiska. Of note they don't allow skiers to go into the boarder cross event. Not that I wasn't up to that level, I chose to keep skiing :)

Friday, March 02, 2007

Revenge of the Hostel

They must have known I was soon to move out of the hostel. I was set up.

Why my conspiracy theory. Well upon returning from my excellent weekend at the snow, I arrived back late at the hostel (thanks to the consistently late Air Canada). I got put into a dorm room with 3 long stayers who were not so pleased to see someone else try to move in at 12am. Anyway one of them had a very bad cold. He was coughing and spluttering everywhere. And once asleep he took the title of the loudest chainsaw snorer I've ever heard. So the result was after a tiring weekend of skiing I had only 3hrs sleep in time for work Monday.

By Tuesday I had the first signs of a sore throat. (I had though moved hostel rooms in order to get sleep)

By wednesday, the day I moved out of the hostel into an apartment it was confirmed. I have a cold. Argh!

I hate missing work due to illness but had to Thursday afternoon.

And yes mother I've been to the doctor now, and I'm laying low to try shrug it off.