Mahoosiive blog update. Part 1. New Year

Afternoon Children of the Frozen Isle. How's it been going? If my facebook updates and the news are anything to go by, your all stuck in your cars in various supermarket car parks and B roads around the UK. Its been almost warm in Vancouver all winter, around 10C and raining most days. The blogs been getting a bit of ignoring for two reasons. 1) I've been shattered as I did another 8 days in a row at work, and only just really recovered from it. 2) Its hard to write your secret blog about Canada when Chloe is always in the room. Shall we start?

Work has been mad busy between Christmas day and New years eve. Every night I started at 5:30 ish, and got out around 1:30 to 2:00 am. Even though its been so busy, its still been a lot easier than the day shift. I've become a pretty good dishwasher over the last few months, so even when the plates are rattling in at a fair pace, I've still not found it that hard to keep the dish pit clear.
I was expecting new years eve to be a crappy night, as I was working, but it actually turned out alright in the end. I got to work around 5:30 and commenced dishwashing. Management had provided us with donuts to keep our energy levels up, and boy did we need it. The whole night was manic up to 12, we were still getting large food orders at 11:45, the point when we stop accepting them. At 12, all of the kitchen staff went into the prep hall and did the count down, Adam gave a short talk and told us it had been a record breaking night in food sales. Our busiest night in history. We each got a shot to celebrate, then people who were closing the restaurant got another (that included me) then bar staff gave us another shot as well. I'm now a notorious light weight, and was hungry and dehydrated, so the shots went straight to my head. So I got to enjoy operating heavy machinery while tipsy. I did momentarily break the dishwasher, and had to climb inside put her back together, she had taken a fair pounding that night. We finally got out the restuarant at 2:00, and headed down the Judge pub (the Joeys local) after. Most of the staff who had worked that evening were down there, most had finished at 10, so they were all pretty hammered.  I had 2 honey largers and a random (hopefully not ryhipnoled) cider, and generally mingled. Joeys has employed a load of Europeans doing the same 1 year visa thingy as me at the moment, so there was plenty of people to compare travelling notes with as well. Around 3:30 I got a call of Chloe asking if I wanted to meet up. She had been out with Moniques Irish friends. Got into a club ( normally $50 and a line around the block to get in) for free by doing the old rub some else's stamp on your arm trick. Got bought a load of drinks by random guys in there, felt a bit worse for ware,so gave me a call, and so spent nothing the entire night. She was staying at a friends place right on English Bay, so we headed back there. The next morning/afternoon we got up and headed down to English Bay to watch the Polar Bear Swim, when a load of people take a dip on New Year day to celebrate the beginning of the year. Half of them still drunk. It was lightly raining, but not to cold, probably around 10C. I hadn't been down to the bay in a while, and the view was impressive, mountains and beach, with additional snow and cloud toppings. It was a fairly large event, there must have been around 500 people down there. Most people ran into the water, stood around for 20 seconds, then ran out, a few braver souls paddled for a bit. A lot of people had gone to the effort of constructing costumes, there was  a massive guy with a viking helmet and fur swimming costume, and the one guy who had attached a massive balloon to his head, and finished his outfit with a pair of pink poker-dot speedo's. He was going absolutely mental. At one point he climbed inside the balloon that was on his head, when the balloon finally admitted defeat and popped, he wore it like a dress and ran up and down the beach shouting "I'm naked". The whole event was really upbeat... maybe even uplifting. Everyone had that sickening positivity that only a Canadian can muster. I really enjoyed it. Afterwards me and Chloe went and grabbed a coffee at starbucks and did some light to moderate people watching on Davie street (Vancouvers west end) then I headed to work.

Not much else to report until later in the week when me Rosie, JP and Piers (or 'The Team' as Piers has dubbed us) went to Tafs (the sorta Mexican themed restaurant) and ate some food. JP was disappointed I didn't eat the rest of his burger, but did eat his salad. He sent me a text a couple of days later about it he was so miffed. We discussed how we had spent our new years, before all heading home, as were all to poor to actually go drinking properly. Thats pretty much it for the new years week.

QT!

Chloe:- "I look like.... what do you call one of them cats that bedraggled?"

Perhaps a bedraggled cat? She was pretty drunk at the time. So I'll let her off.

Server:- "Guys, the lounge is filling up"
Christian:- "Your a lounge! Oooohhhhh I showed him!"
Mike:- "Surely 'Your Mum is filling up' would have been a better response?"

I love kitchen banter.

Video of the week:-




Props to John for telling me about this guy. I don't really like NERD, but this interview is really good. Nardwaur is from Vancouver.

Just a quick note on 'The Team' slowly turning into Canadians, and not only being part of random chats with strangers, but even starting some of them. The other day, someone asked directions to the cinema. JP asked him what he was going to see, on hearing it was Avatar, he decided to give his opinion on it. It was only as he was walking away he wondered what had possessed him to do it. The other day I had a 5 minute chat with the girl who was serving me in the bank about how my signature was getting worse, at one point another customer joined in. God knows whats going to happen when I get back to Oxford and find myself still doing it.