Wed, Apr 18th

Hey all. I'm back from an amazing weekend in the Whistler ski resort so I thought i'd better update ye good folk. Firstly just a quick note on my Easter weekend. I just had the Friday off and not the Monday but it was better then nothing. I didn't get up to anything too crazy as I needed to save for Whistler the following weekend. The weather was nice that weekend so on the Friday myself and Kelly walked along the coast of downtown Vancouver which brings you to Stanley Park. The place was packed as everyone was off work and it was the nicest day in weeks. Stanley Park is massive so we walked as long as we could but only made it less then half way round. So we decided to go back on the Sat and rent bikes so we could get a good tour of the park. It was well worth renting the bikes for a few hours and it was nice to get back on the saddle since I haven't been on a bike since leaving home.

During the week I had a second interview with a small new games company that has set up here. It went quite well, much better then the first one, but i'll have to wait another week to see if I got the job. If I did get it i'd have to seriously think about staying here past the year. Will wait and see I guess.

Well I finally made it to Whistler after months of planning and it was definitely worth it. It's pretty much the end of the ski season now with just a couple of weeks left so this was about our last chance to go. I went with Kelly, Melissa, Kyungmin and three of his friends (two Korean guys and a Japanese girl). It was great that they came as it enabled us to rent a nice minivan and they'd also been snowboarding before so they gave us some lessons. We collected the car as early as possible on the Sat, 7am and headed straight off on our 2 hour journey. Its a nice journey there through the mountains and along the coast but there's also loads of construction going on in preparation for the 2010 Winter Olympics.

We got there around 9 and went and rented our gear straight away. I went for skis on the first day and headed straight up to one of the easier slopes with the rest of the gang. Our first trip down the mountain was hilarious with lots of tumbling, crawling and laughter from all. After a couple of practice runs myself, Kyungmin, David and Erika got the gondola up to the top of Whistler mountain. The gondola takes about 20 min to get to the top of the 6000ft mountain. While I was getting the gondola up I just kept thinking that I really wasn't ready for this yet. I did ok though, lots of falling, but nothing too bad. It took us almost an hour to get down to the bottom of the mountain and headed straight back up again. I stayed skiing for as long as possible and then we hung out in the village for a bit. There was a great buzz around the village as there was a music festival and world ski and snowboarding championship on. We headed back to our hostel then which was actually pretty far from the village, almost a 40 min drive, but it was the only place still available when we were booking. We had a pretty quite night, just went for dinner and got a few drinks.

On the following day we got up at 7 and got back to Whistler for 8.30. Kelly persuaded me to try snowboarding, I was skeptical as everyone had told me that its much harder to pick up then skiing. I'm glad I gave it a try though as I loved it and I had Kyungmin to give me a few free lessons, which I sorely missed while skiing. Kyungmin kept trying to persuade me to go to the top of the mountain to the big slopes on the snowboard and while I really didn't think I was ready I went with my motto for the weekend, Fuck it, why not? I'm so glad I just went for it as it was brilliant fun. Think I may just pass on the skis and stick to the snowboard in future. We all had a brilliant weekend and I reckon i'm well on my way to competing in the Olympics in skiing, snowboarding and ice skating.

Getting back to the real world after the weekend sucked. Especially as all of my muscles were aching for the next few days. And to top it all off half of my face was sunburnt from the snow. That was nice and embarrassing having to go to work with half my face white and half bright red. Well that's the price you pay becoming a professional snowboarder.

Cycling through Stanley Park

Kelly looking slightly gigantic on her bike

I need to stop taking pictures while doing something potentially dangerous

We enjoyed some great views on the way to Whistler

Here's the beauty of a Dodge minibus we rented. We could probably just have slept in it too.

This was the nicest hostel i've ever been in, pretty far from Whistler village though.

David, Erika, Dennis, Moi, Kelly, Melissa and Kyungmin in Whistler village before embarking on our day on the mountain.

Straight up to the first stop on the gondola to test what i've learnt on my previous skiing trip, not a lot it turns out.

Some extra snowfall should help us out, right?

Pose for a picture or help Erika? Pose it is then.

The view of Whistler village from one of the easier slopes.

Oh Canada...... We venture up to the top of the mountain, 6000ft up. Pretty windy up there.

1 last photo in case I didn't make it all the way to the bottom of the mountain in 1 piece.

And off we gooooooo

Erika (from Japan) was quite the snowboarder.

Myself and my roommate Kyungmin

Day 2 and its time to try snowboarding

Erika gives Kelly a few lessons

Kyungmin demonstrates the procedure for encountering a bear.

A few pics from the gondola on the way to the top

The Telus world ski and snowboarding championship

The gang all set for a day of snowboarding

Mon, April 2nd

Just had a brilliant weekend so I thought i'd better update ye good folks before I forget it all. Firstly though i'll give ye a quick update on my St Patrick's day. It's actually a pretty big deal over here as everyone hits the pubs for the day, just like home so. It was handy that it happened to fall on a Sat this year so we were able to hit the pub nice and early. Amazingly there were a lot of queues to get into pubs as early as 2pm. Well myself and Kelly went to an Irish bar called Smiley O'Neals at 2pm and stayed there all day. We had a great day and partied for a good 12 hours. The pub had a live band and dancing all day too to keep the drunken Canadians happy. I even had a pint of Guinness and a pint of green beer. I went all out. And our waitress was so impressed by our drinking that she bought us a round of shots, like we needed them.

Probably the highlight of the day was when an Aussie girl came up to me at one stage and asked to explain to her what St Patrick actually did. I convinced her that he brought leprechauns to Ireland in the 4th century as a religious symbol. Obviously they're extinct now though. And the colour of the leprechaun is green so that's why everyone wears green now. She then asked me what about banishing the snakes and I told her not to be silly, that that was only a myth. How I kept a straight face throughout the story I'll never know, especially as Kelly was laughing away behind her. It was classic stuff.

So the following morning when I woke I managed to piece together my trip home by reading the texts I sent. Apparently I got lost, went into a coffee shop, then got lost, then went into a 7/11 for a while where some girls invited me to a party, then I got lost for a bit and eventually made it home in one piece. So an average night out for me then.

Last weekend then, myself and Kelly went to Granville Island which is just outside Downtown Vancouver, it was a beautiful day so the place was packed. It's a really nice area with great markets, shops, lots of live music and just a great buzz about the place. It's very popular for both tourists and the locals. It's a cool place to hang out on a nice day so i'll prob be back there quite a bit during the summer.

Ok, that brings me up to the weekend just gone, which was my second time up on the local ski mountains. Except this time I wasn't going skiing. It was time for some tubing (or chooobin if you're Scottish). I went to Cypress Mountain instead of Grouse. It was a special SWAP organised event so there was a group of about 20 of us from all over the world. Tubing, by the way, is when you sit in a rubber tube, like the tube in a wheel for a car, and fly down a specially made slope in the snow. The fun really starts when you go down in a group of people all hanging onto each other. A couple of times all of the SWAP people went down at once. We had 22 people going down the slope at once all hanging onto each other. Great craic. It was a strange day to be on the snow as it was about 20 degrees and not a cloud in the sky, so we were running around in the snow in t-shirts for the day. I even got a bit burnt.

A few hours of tubing later we all went to the pub and went drinking for the night. I met a lot of cool new people that day and exchanged numbers. There was more crazy coincidences again when two girls we were out with had previously met me in Toronto. They hadn't met each other before so i'm starting to think that I must be some sort of beacon that people get to know each other through. Almost everyone i've been out with in Vancouver i've met in Toronto already. Not that I remember half of them as there was a lot of crazy nights out in Toronto. So now i've got lots more people to go out for drinks with, then again i'm not too sure that's such a good idea.

That pretty much covers the last 3 weeks for me. Work is still going fine. Glen and Jamie are still away but will def be back within 2 weeks. I'm surprised they haven't ran outta cash by now. Think i'll prob head to Whistler with Kelly in 2 weeks so gotta cut down on the spending as it's very expensive there. I'll report back in a few weeks.

I'll upload clips of the tubing on my pictures site here.

http://picasaweb.google.com/boriordan/Vancouver

A lovely green pint on Paddy's Day

1 too many green Long Island Ice Teas? Who am I to say..... but yes.Me, pretty happy with my desert.

Paddy's day parade, which strangely was quite Scottish...

...except for this fella

Our day on Granville island, we had a little boat trip.

Choobin time. These were the slopes we went down.

Here's my tube.

There was no need to walk to the top of the hill as they just clip you onto a rope which drags you up, as displayed here. Perfect time for a snow ball fight too.

Here's our gang deciding how we can all go down the hill at once.

And here's the result. Carnage ensued.

A great day of chooobin had by all.

Here's the best part of tubing. Trying to get out of the tube without falling over due to the dizziness suffered from a good spin. Also note Kelly's AWESOME teenage mutant ninja turtles t-shirt purchased in Toronto.