The First Leg: Vancouver

Well, here is the first batch of photos!


The first leg of my journey to the West was Vancouver, where I dropped in on my pal of pals Clayton and did my best to invade his privacy.


Clayton is not the skinny arts student I remember. He used to be at least as skinny as me but after starting to work out regulary he blossomed into a real man's body. (Proving that not all vegans must necessarily be as skinny as me. Take note!)


Clayton resides with his baby-faced beau, Tim. Or perhaps Tim is only baby-faced in comparison to Clayton's new grisly look. They claimed to be a little hung-over after recent birthday celebrations for Tim, but they were energetic enough to deal with a culture-shocked intruder for a few days, and graciously skipped their regular evening sessions in the gym.


Billy had changed too. He seemed a lot mellower than the aggressively affectionate and clumsy juggernaut that I knew, but Clayton suggested that it might actually be me who has mellowed.


Because I was there during the week and Clayton and Tim both have regular jobs, I had a lot of time to myself, and the opportunity to admire the guys' furniture.


Billy was always willing to be a model for these furniture shots.


They live near English Bay, and right against a large park (larger in fact than the downtown area) so it was a nice place for me to wander around.


As I mentioned before, I took a lot of pictures of buildings and various environs both in Vancouver and elsewhere to show people back in Taiwan. Here is one.


Here is another. A nice place to have your lunch, I think.


Somehow the sight of people just hanging out on the steps of an art gallery struck me as a sign of an advanced culture. But like I said, I was culture shocking at the time...


After spending most of my time wandering around downtown, I took Claytons advice and took a trip out to Vancouver's forested burbs.


Suspension bridge! Unfortunately I wasn't able to take any pictures of the bridge that conveyed how high it was or how nice its surroundings were.


Boring stream photo?


Well how about another?


I didn't bring my trunks, so there would be no miniature-cliff-diving for me. It looked like fun.

After a few days of enjoying Vancouver and the company of Clayton and Tim, I hopped on the bus and headed East across the rockies to the praries--to Grande Prarie, in fact. But that post will come later...

Here are some pictures from the bus ride:











Tomorrow is a Typhoon Day! No classes for me to teach. I'll be hunkered down with bottles of water, instant foods, and "Garth Marenghi's Dark Place" (a funny British TV show).

Bye for now!

Bizzee

Wow! 2 weeks since my last post and that travelogue I promised is far from forth-coming...

However, summer classes end this week and I have a week off (in theory) before the school year officially begins. Hopefully, during that time I'll at least be able to fire off some pictures and captions.

Although I haven't been teaching a full schedule lately, I've been kept busy by cleaning and painting the dormitory apartment I'll be moving into this week. I'll be living on campus with a coworker, but not before we get the stink out of the apartment. It's frighteningly persistent.

Later, gators.

I'm biggity back, y'all

Well, I've been back in Taiwan for a week and a half already, and I've been pretty busy getting prepared for my summer and fall classes. In fact, my plane landed at 5 am and I was in the office before noon the same day, online slightly scatterbrained.

I've finally posted a stream of thought that I wrote while waiting for my 2am flight in the Vancouver airport (below). It is slightly disturbing in that it is pretty critical of Taiwan, and I have never wanted to become one of those non-stop complaining foreigners that are so common here. Since arriving, I've become a little more equivocal in my assesment of the situation in Taiwan. For example, there are indeed a lot of trees in my area of Taipei, and Taiwan would be quite beautiful in general if you could see the hills clearly (unfortunately everything is obscured by a haze which I assume is pollution-related.)

I have indeed become more of a bitter foreigner though. Since returning I've somewhat rudely told my new boss that I don't trust the school administration and that contracts don't mean much in Taiwan, and the oxymoronic comment to my girlfriend that Canadians don't generalize about races and nationalities as much as Taiwanese do.

Anyways, I've got lots of pictures to post from my trip. I'll try to digest it over the coming weeks. But now, it's class time...