Kites and Shakespeare

Three weekends ago, we spent a wonderful Saturday afternoon at the annual Bard on the Beach festival in Vanier Park, Vancouver. This is one of Canada's largest Shakespeare festivals, held each summer from June through September and currently in its 20th year. There are four Shakespearean plays featured over the four months, held in two tents against a backdrop of mountains, sea and sky. This year's events are The Comedy of Errors, All's Well That Ends Well, Othello, and Richard II.

We went to see The Comedy of Errors with Shonna, Angharad, Juanita, Peter and Jolana. Ben and I arrived a couple of hours early to get in the queue, ready for when the doors would open 40 minutes before the performance (we had prebooked tickets but it's open seating). We ended up about third in line, so while Ben held our place I wandered over to the nearby 34th Annual British Columbia Kiteflyers' Association Festival and took some photos! Btw, the mountains in the background are the local ski fields where we went snowboarding and snowshoeing in winter...


Here are some photos of the Bard venue, and us reserving our seats 40 minutes before the show with the rest of the eager masses - this is an honesty system using sticky notes provided by festival volunteers! We were in the larger of the two tents, which has only 520 seats - the smaller venue has 240 seats. You can see the larger tent from the outside in the last photo below (right side). Anyway, we thoroughly enjoyed the comedy and hope to go back for All's Well That Ends Well sometime. What a fantastic festival!!


PS. This is the 200th post on this blog!!

Women on Water

A few weeks ago, Lisa and I went to a "Women on Water" kayaking evening with Angharad. These are held every Thursday night throughout summer at Deep Cove (where the group of us went kayaking when Megan and Justin were here). There were probably 50 women there, and we paddled about 10kms - a great workout and lots of fun!


Here's a video taken as I was just figuring out how to use the foot pedals to steer... it ends a bit abruptly and you may be able to tell why...

I laughed every time the group took off again after receiving the latest set of instructions: all with one accord, a hundred yellow paddle tips would start bobbing up and down... Lisa and I spent most of the time trailing behind the rest of the group so had plenty of time to observe this!!


Halfway through, we stopped for a rest and the organisers paddled around handing out lollipops to everyone. The funny thing was that we had all stopped surrounding a fishing boat called "Dream Girl" with two men in it. It must have seemed a bit surreal to them - sitting there in silence, and suddenly an onslaught of 50 ferociously-paddling women came advancing around the nearest rocky outcrop!!! Or maybe they drop anchor there every week on purpose...


And here we all are, getting in close to hear the instructors telling us how to cross the last open patch of the cove without getting run down by speedboats...


Then, a well-deserved and delicious pizza!

Cultus Lake Waterslides

Three weeks ago we spent a Saturday at the Cultus Lakes Waterslide Park in Chilliwack, about an hour from where live. We car pooled with Gerard and Janelle, and met Derek, Tyson and Nicole there. The weather had been forecast at 25 degrees but turned out to only reach 17 degrees, brrr! At least this meant there were barely any line-ups! Here are some photos of the park...


And the rest of the photos are courtesy of Janelle...

L-R below: Gerard, Janelle, Tyson, Ben, Derek.

Here are some before, during and after photos of my dramatic incident for the day: being whacked on the nose by the top of Ben's head when we hit the bottom on the "Valley of Fear", a half-pipe shaped ride in which the riders are pushed from the top of one side and slide back and forth like a pendulum until coming to rest at the bottom. As demonstrated by me in the first photo, we had been instructed to put our chin on our chest to avoid such an incident. The crack occurred between the first and second photo...

Ouch!! However, my nose is okay now, so thanks for your concern but there's no need to worry. ;)

On the way home that evening, we had a scrumptious and enormous tea at a Szchezuan (Chinese) restaurant the others knew about. Nose incidents aside, it was a great day out!

Work and study update

20 days since my last blog post - I think that's a new record!! We have been busy with full time work and our uni exams, but are glad to announce that our exams are now over! Despite still having to go to work for 40 hours each week, we feel like we are on holidays. :P I had one exam and Ben had two, all hosted at UBC, and we think they went ok - but we'll find out for sure on 10th July.

Ben's job is going well. I don't think I have officially blogged about what he does: his role is Team Lead/ Project Management Support for the marine sciences division of an environmental engineering firm. He actually got the job after a 4-hour temping assignment to put together a desk turned into doing some computer referencing work for the department for a few weeks, and that turned into his being employed directly by the company to fill this new role they had created to keep up with the admin/ HR/ resourcing side of a rapidly expanding team! The way things come together sometimes is just amazing.

I work for an industrial pump manufacturer. Until the end of May, I was their Expeditor, replacing a lady who was on leave. Then at the start of June, I moved into their Parts Sales department to replace a guy who was replacing a lady who is on leave (if you followed that!). I got the job through the temping agency too, but am now employed directly by the company - at this stage until December. My job involves a lot of computer work (in SAP) doing up quotes and sales orders and working out pricing for various parts of pumps. Customers already have the pumps and just contact us by email or fax for the spare parts they need.

Back in mid May, my workplace held an open day BBQ to celebrate the company's 175th birthday. Ben came for lunch and I took him on a tour through the factory to show him the various stages of the pump-making process. :) Here are a few photos from the day - the blue jackets were company gifts we received that morning...


Unfortunately I only ever saw the cake in the above photo some weeks later - we'd left by that time as employees were given the rest of the day off! It's a great company to work for, and the thing that has continually astounded me is that no one seems to leave except to retire. Since I started there, many of my workmates have celebrated their 10, 20, and even 40 year milestones, and some even have parents who worked there!

At this stage our plan is to live here until about October 2010... yes, almost 2 years, as opposed to our original 6 month plan! This is due to a number of factors, including finding good jobs, having great accommodation, fitting in with the wedding plans of loved ones in Australia, and not having seen much of Canada yet!! Needless to say, we are enjoying our time here very much.

We are looking forward to getting away for a couple of trips in July. We have been working non-stop for 5 months now, and here is what we have planned to bring the "holiday" back into our "working holiday" :P... from 10-20 July we will be road tripping in Alberta, and from 30 July - 3 August we are having 4 nights in Las Vegas. So you can look forward to something more interesting to read about on here soon!! For now, I have some activities from the last few weekends to update you on, so I'd better get started...

Clothes and book swap party

On Thursday evening, Shonna hosted a clothing and book swap party in her backyard, which was a lot of fun! Everyone donated their don't want/ don't wear/ don't fit clothes, as well as shoes, books, and varous other items, and basically the ownership was rearranged so that the attendees ended up with things that they do want/ will wear/ do fit! The large pile of leftover clothes were then divided into convention giveaways and op shop donations.

The party was organised like this: someone would hold up each item of clothing, describe its appearance, size, potential uses etc, and then anyone interested in it was given a playing card. The person with the highest card would get the first go at trying the item on. I ended up with quite a few nice things, including some shirts, skirts, and two pairs of shoes, and I even inherited Susie's left-behind Aussie paraphernalia, as seen below! :)


Thanks to Shonna for organising an event that has significantly expanded my quite limited traveller's wardrobe! :D