East Coast Junket

23 Aug - 1 Sep 2008


First Stop - Toron'o


Well....this week I learned that Toronto is considered central Canada, and not east coast! But to me, anything 5 hours east of Vancouver (by plane) is east coast in my books! Toronto was a nice city and the trams reminded of home in Melbourne. The buskers festival was on that weekend. There was an Aussie street entertainer from Sydney. He was able to fit is whole body through a squash racquet - what a freak!


Aussie street entertainer 'Alikazam' fitting through a squash racquet, tennis racquent and toilet seat!

Mel outside the (Ice) Hockey hall of Fame in Toronto.

Second Stop - Niagara on the Lake


The main purpose of the trip was to attend a training course. It was a soft skills course where we learnt how to lead a team. It was a national training course where colleagues flew in from all parts of the country. The course was taught in both English and French. There was a very distinct divide between the english speakers and the french speakers. One of our tasks was to make a video. 3 groups did the video in english and 1 group did the video in french. All the english speakers had no idea what they were saying in the French video.



One night after dinner we went to see Niagara Falls. The view from the Canadian side is definitely much more spectacular than the US side.

American falls at night


Last Stop - New Jersey & New York

My last stop was New Jersey to visit the 'relos'. A solid 8 hours was spent shopping at the Woodbury Common outlet in New York State. The credit card got a good bashing that day. We witnessed the 'Coach' phenomena where you had to queue to go into the store and not a soul came out empty handed!

We also spent a day in Manhattan, NYC. Being a Sunday on a long weekend, NYC was a ghost town with only tourists wandering the streets. We went to ground zero and I was surprised to see that it was still a construction site! No visit to NYC is complete with a visit to Chinatown. We went to the BIG WONG restaurant (which has not changed one bit since my last visit 5 years ago!) for a cheap but good feed. Then washed it all down by eating dou fu fa in a nearby park while JJ played in the playground.






Mel & Cousin JJ in New Jersey

A taste of Home @ Mooses

Thurs 7 Aug 2007

Shazza, Jo & I went for some pub grub at Mooses Down Under. It's an Aussie pub that serves some traditional Aussie tucker and occasionally shows the footy.

It has been 9 months since my last Chicken Parma, so I had to order it. It was pretty good, but don't know how well it would rate on superparma.com. I washed it down with a Coopers Pale Ale. The strange thing was the Parma was served on a bed of Spaghetti Napolitana...very strange indeed!

Square Watermelons

We all know the Japanese are crazy...however the Canadians are even crazier! Why?

On the weekend, I saw some square watermelons being sold at Urban Fare (supermarket). Yes, they are real watermelons which have been grown into a cubic shape. The catch is that each watermelon sells for CDN$100! Clearly, there are some crazy Japs out there to grow these things, and then there are crazy Canadians out there who are willing to buy a square watermelon! haha...

A day at the office

8 Jul 2008.

If only every work day was like this! What could be better than golfing on a nice sunny day during work hours?

We're going on a bear hunt

27 June - 1 July 2008.

Summer is finally here! I've just spent the long weekend in Alberta, and the weather has been sunny and warm (i.e. 30oC).

I volunteered to do an inventory count in Edmonton, which just happened to fall just before the super long weekend. It was a perfect opportunity to see the Canadian Rockies.

I travelled through Jasper & Banff National Parks and saw mountains, lakes and even a glacier. Of all the places I visited, the Moraine Lake wins the gold medal for scenery. It beats Lake Louise by a mile!

The views were exactly like the postcards, if not better. However the highlight of the trip was seeing Canadian wildlife by the side of the road...

Here's what I ticked off the list:

• Coyote
• Black bears...one even crossed the road! thank goodness we were inside the car as I'm told bears can sprint pretty damn fast!
• Bull elk & female elk
• Deer including a little bambi! and a random deer in downtown Banff!
• Mountain goat on a steep rocky mountain
• Big horn sheep
• Squirrels

Unfortunately, I didn't see any moose or grizzly bears. They must have been on vacation!

Tomorrow, I head back to Calgary to catch my flight back to Vancouver....Sadly it is back to work.

Dragonboat Festival

21-22 June 2008.

The annual Dragon Boat Festival is the biggest dragon boat regatta in North America. Teams from all walks of life came from all over North America.

We almost got disqualified in the 2nd heat as our steersperson went AWOL. Thankfully, a bloke called Stephen Wong from the Gung Haggis Fat Choy team came to the rescue and steered for us.

The team pulled together when it mattered. In our final race, we came in with a bronze medal at 2 minutes 26.12 seconds.

Great effort team!

The first Dragonboat regatta

Sat 7 June 2008.

Imagine this is us...except about 30 seconds slower!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G11WpOXDpe4&fmt=6

The race is 500m = 3 minutes of intense paddling. Our muscles were certainly burning by the time we crossed the finish line!