I went to Squamish the other day. Squamish is a town about 1 hour south of Whistler. It’s small, but seems big because it’s stretched along a huge section of the highway. I went down with Tom because he wanted to treat himself by buying a guitar (pronounced geetar in Canada, go figure) and I need to buy a couple things from Walmart.

When I arrived to Squamish, the first things that I thought was “where the hell are we?” and “where can I get some food?” (I was hungry!). There isn’t much in “downtown” Squamish, but we did manage to find the music store. We spent an age in the music store. Which is fair enough. Tom needed to play quite a few of the guitars before he could decide. But eventually he bought a really nice Seagull (Canadian make) Acoustic/Electric Cutaway guitar and various other bits and bobs.

Walmart is really badly placed in Squamish. There are two bus terminal one at each end. Walmart is exactly in the middle. Since we didn’t know the local bus routes or times we decided to walk, in the dark, along the highway. 20 minutes walking by the side of the road in the cold, carrying guitar equipment. Not fun.

OK, now when I say take the plunge, I mean buying an Ipod. I’ve always wanted one. They’re popular and very easy to use. Not to mention they look good. But I’ve always been opposed to the price. They are just too expensive for what they are. But I need a music player for when I’m riding all the lifts, etc. So I bought one. A nice black 8GB nano. I thought it would be a nice present to myself

Good news guys, I got a second interview at Buffalo Bills. One of the clubs that I spend a whole day queuing for. Got the phone call at 7PM for an interview at 9PM. Luckily I live right in the middle of town about 400m from the place. Went to the interview, was surprised at home informal it was. I just sat down and had a chat with one of the managers. Once we we’re done, he offered me a job. Sadly not as a barman, but as a host. He also invited me to “Family Dinner” and “Dodgeball”.

Now, whats cool about this company (Gibson Hospitality) that I have been hired for is that every Wednesday, they have something called “Family Dinner”. This is held at one of the three Whistler locations that they have (Buffalo Bills, Tapley’s and Longhorn Saloon) and everyone not working that evening is invited to have a free meal and catch up with people from the other places. Which is cool as it gave me a chance to meet new people.

Also, this company is very into employee morale. So they organise teambuilding events. In this case Dodgeball. Now, I hadn’t played dodgeball since I was a kid. Neither had any of the new people who I was teamed up with. So we had no idea of the rules, or what the hell was going on. Got knocked out in the first round. I did have fun though. Got to know several of the new staff that were hired at the same time as me.

We decided that we need to explore a bit beyond Whistler, we also need to do some ‘cheaper’ shopping. Visiting Vancouver seemed like the perfect solution to both of our problems. After a bit of planning, looking for car hire, bus tickets, etc we decided that renting a car was the most flexible option. Vancouver is a big place and we did not want to get stuck lugging around a load of stuff. Surprisingly, Whistler has only one car rental agency (AVIS). Now, everyone I’ve met in Whislter is friendly. Except the woman working here. She was the most useless and unhelpful person I’ve met. We booked a large car (Hyundai Santa Fe), we get there and she says it’s no longer available and gives us a KIA (for those of you who no nothing about cars, its shit).

The drive down to Vancouver is long. It isn’t that far, but the speed limit is low and the road is very windy. The scenery though is amazing. The views of the mountains and the sea are breathtaking.

So there we are driving down, me navigating. It’s strange having to navigate with a map again. I’m honestly surprised how dependent I have become on GPS. It’s almost scary. Anyway, one of the main reasons we wanted to go down to Vancouver is to do some shopping and get our Social Insurance Numbers. Being the forward thinking people we are we planned our route out before hand (vaguely). Being human, we got a bit lost. Luckily, Vancouver is setup in a grid formation (much like all North American cities) so finding our way back on course wasn’t too hard.

Shopping for snowboard equipment was made extremely simple by the fact that one stretch of road in Vancouver has over half a dozen snowboard shops on it. I thought we would be in and out relatively quickly. Come on, we’re men, we don’t faff around clothes shopping. We’re not women… Well, apparently we are. I’d more or less picked out what I wanted to buy before I went into the shop. Having had a week to just browse and ask questions. My mates hadn’t. So Q&A time added up, but eventually we all left with something. Even though it took us a ridiculous amount of time and put us way behind schedule and it’s dark.

Next stop on our Vancouver journey was IKEA. You have to love IKEA, for house supplies they’re simple, cheap and cheerful. Our flat at the moment only has 3 beds. Problematic when there are 4 people… Luckily, I’d already sorted out a mattress up in Whistler (gold star for me :D), so we didn’t have to worry about hauling that huge thing. We just need the frame, and other bits and bobs for the house. I’m sure everyone has been to IKEA before and knows the general layout of things. It’s pretty much the same over here. IKEA kindly provides everything in nice flat pack format. Easy to move and carry. Except for the “small” bed we wanted. The box was about 3/4 the length of the car. After a bit of dismantling and a lot of compromise, we managed to fit it in the car. The compromise being the two sitting in the back being nice and snug.

Final stop on our trip was the supermarket. This may not sound interesting, but circumstances made it so. You see, the journey time from Vancouver to Whislter is about 2 1/2 hours. We know the the road is closed at 11PM till 2AM and it’s 7.15PM when we get to the supermarket. So we’re in a hurry.

I’m not sure if you’ve ever been to an “American” supermarket. Just think of the biggest British supermarket and double it, oh and everything is in bulk. This was going to be our big shop because it’s a lot cheaper here than Whistler. We didn’t have much time to spend shopping, so we went crazy. Totaled a bill of nearly $500 on food and supplies. Which more or less filled the rest of the car.

All I can say about the return journey was I nervous. It’s dark, the road is windy and we’re going faster than we should (out of need). I’m not saying that Jinesh is a bad driver, it’s just scary not being in control. Whilst driving we catch a sign with road work details. “Closed 10PM to 3AM and 4AM to 6AM”. Shit! So we speed upa bit more. Just our luck, we make it to the start of the road works and we see cars 100m in front of us driving up the highway. Then a maintanence truck pulls infront of us draging ot a barrier. Bollocks! We’re stuck again. For 5 hours.

Being in a cramped car for 5 hours with nothing to do is not fun, even sleep is hard to come by. I can say without a doubt that these were some of the most BORING hours of my life.

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It’s snowing! Well, at least it was. Strangely enough there hasn’t been much snow in Whistler. Which is a real bummer. Means the season won’t open early. Last week we got a teaser of what it would be like, but sadly it was washed away in the rain. We’re hoping that the weather will get colder (I can’t believe I’m saying that) so that the snow can settle and we can go on the slopes. When it was snowing things looked really nice. I only took a couple pictures, but there will be plenty more pictures of snow later…

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OK, so I thought that I would get a proactive start to the job hunting. Fish out where the best places to work are in Whislter and what the best jobs are. All of this before the rest of my mates arrived. Now, I’m here in Whistler to enjoy the daytime snowboarding. So a full-time day job was out of the question. That really only leaves bar work as my only option. If you ever come to Whistler, the first thing you notice is that there are bars and retaurants EVERYWHERE you look. And of course, me being me, I wanted to find some work as a barman. I’ve been doing that kind of work for a while now, and I think that I’m pretty good at it (I don’t mean to blow my own horn, but toot toot ).

The first thing that I found out is that EVERYONE wants bar work. Makes sense really, they all have the same idea as me. Play hard during the day, work hard during the night. Not only that, but unlike the UK, Canada all staff work for tips. You have to tip for EVERYTHING. And if your not tipping, your paying the nice 15% added tax, which they so conveniently leave off the price. So competition is HIGH. I walk around town for a couple days handing out CV’s to place that are hiring and that I find interesting, hoping that someone will call me back.

Basically, it’s pointless. Just handing in CV’s doesn’t work. You have to wait for the places to hold job fairs. Which is fair enough, there is a high demand for the few available positions. Therefore places can afford to be picky. So, the idea of getting a jump start on the hunting was a bust. I ended up having to wait for the job fairs.

Now, there was 2 days of job fairs and by this time the rest of my flatmates had already arrived. The first day was for a chain of bars. The fair was suppose to begin at 1PM, we arived there at 1.05PM and the queue was already MASSIVE. We spent a total of 5 hours in the queue. Now, I know that we are British and that queuing is our national sport. But COME ON! I thought that 5 hours of queuing was ridiculous. The whole process involved queue once for the initial screening interview, then queuing again for another indepth one. We were basically queuing to queue…The upside is that this was the kinda job that I really was looking for and that I felt good about both my interviews. The downside, there were 500+ other people competing for the two dozen available jobs.

Day 2 was a general job fair. This one lots more companies were hiring people. Again, the place was packed. We queued up for a few of the booths, but decided to call it a day early on. Because, these weren’t really the jobs we wanted (all day work) and we weren’t going to spend another day of queuing (it’s tiring!).

PK, if your reading this, forget Manchester. Move up to Whistler, open up a bar/club and make a fortune! During peak season the place is super busy and all the clubs are full every night.

Woke up after only 5 hours sleep. Damn jetlag! This is the first time that I’ve had a proper look at the flat. It’s a really nice place. A 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom apartment. We have HUGE high def tv, which will be useful when we get the PC hooked up to it. Like I said before, the flat is situated right in the middle of the village. We decided to have a look around the village. The scenery is AMAZING. I can honestly say that it was the first time in a while that I have felt truely happy and relaxed. The village itself isn’t really that big. You can walk from one end to the next in less than 10 minutes. Also, the place was deserted. I guess that it’s because the season hadn’t truly started yet.

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Ok, so I’m way behind on my posting. I think it’s easiest to start from the beginning…

My trip from Brussels to Whistler was one of the longest that I have ever done! Took a total of about 30 hours… Woke up at 5am (GMT+1) on Monday, my plane to Heathrow was at 7.30am from Zaventum. I’m still surprised at how busy it is there so early in the morning. Plane ride was uneventful, Canada Airways outsorced their short flights to BMI. Honestly reminded me of flying with Ryan Air (and I’m sure everyone has regretted that decision). Arriving at Heathrow, I needed to change terminal. I was thinking that this would be a nightmare. It being Heathrow and all… But it was surprisingly efficient (go figure). Now is where the journey starts to become fun. An 8 hour wait in Terminal 3. Best 8 hours of my life… The place is SO busy and loud that it is nearly impossible to sleep. This was when I wished I had some frequent flyer card that could give me access to a quite lounge area. Anyhow, after this neverending wait, I finally met up with Bina in the queue to board the plane. The fact that we were 10 rows away meant, that we weren’t going to see much of each other.

Ok, I’m not normally a nervous flyer, but the turbulance over Iceland scared me… A part from that, the rest of the flight was kinda dull and long (±10 hours). Except for the landing. That was bad. The plane bounced up of the tarmac a few times before finally settling.

After getting off the plane, we picked up our luggage and went to get our Work Visas. After the 20 minute queue. We were out the door, legally, and excited to see our new home… Anticlimax… I wanted to see 2 foot deep snow, but its was like 8C and raining.

Ok, if your planning on coming to Whislter, BOOK YOUR BUS TICKET. We didn’t and had to wait 2 hours for a available bus. Then prepare yourself for the journey. The bus trip is at least 3 hours. To make matters worse, we got stopped because they close the road for roadworks between 10PM and 3AM! So that was fun.

Finally we arrive. Now Whistler isn’t a big place, but being pointed in the totally opposite direction by the bus driver and walking in the cold rain with your bags is NOT fun. Suffice to say, what should be a 2 minute walk turned into a 30 minute walk.

We FINALLY arrived in the flat and crashed!

Hi guys,

Ok, my blog is FINALLY up and running. Since it took a lot longer than I had anticipated to get to this point, I’ll have to sit down and do a massive update… So be prepared to read a novel…

Now that I have this blog, this will be the place you can keep a track of what me and my mates from uni are up to here in Whistler! So don’t forget to check back.

Anyway, hope everyone is as happy as I am at the moment and feel free to contact me to catch up.