Jason's Travel Blog

The NBA - "I Love this Game!"

2007-01-23T07:21:00.000+04:00

Well thanks to Amy, I was fortunate to be able to watch the Seattle Supersonics vs the Utah Jazz, down in Seattle!... As soon as we arrived at Key Arena the atmosphere was PUMPING! they had the marching band "Blue Thunder" out the front bangin away on their drums and the massive crowds were slowly filing into the stadium. Once we had collected our tickets and entered inside, we quickly found our gate and got to our seats. We weren't too far back! The atmosphere was even better than I had imagined after watching games on tv. I managed to sneak some pics with my crappy ixus.. sorry bout the quality!.. Anyways I just have to say that the game was AWESOME!.. Utah was leading most of the way into the 4th quarter. With 5 minutes remaining a lot of the crowd started to leave as they thought it was game over for the sonics. Weren't they WRONG!!.. The amazing Ray Allen turned up the heat, and managed to pump some stunning 3 pointers! .. amazingly tieing the game during the final seconds and bringing them into overtime. The Sonics then went on to win the game!! and Ray Allen scored a career high 54 points!! GO SONICS!!

New Year's Eve up at Whistler and Pemberton!

2007-01-08T10:08:00.000+04:00

So as a last minute decision, we planned to spend New Year's Eve up at Whistler as we managed to get some accomodation at the Pemberton Valley Lodge (About 32km's away from Whistler Village) and not to mention at a very reasonable rate.

A little bit about Pemberton, its a very small town with a population of 3000 people. They only have one traffic light in the whole town, two petrol stations and one general store. However they do have a McDonald's!!..

Here's that one an only traffic light in Pemberton!

We spent the first day snowboarding up on Whistler Mountain and then the second day up at Blackcomb. Conditions were close to PERFECT on the first day. No rain, No snow, nothing but fine visibility!... can't say too much about the second day as it started to snow, and to top it off there was some crazy fog half way down the mountain!. So bad that you couldn't see your hand when you stuck it out in front of you.. not good when your hammering down the slope and not knowing whether you're gonna end up in a tree!...

Being the extreme superman that I am, I was a bit ambitious on the first day, and went down a blue run a bit too fast :( (The way they grade difficulties up on the mountains is Green (Beginner), Blue (Intermediate), Black Diamond (Advanced), Double Black Diamond (Evil Kneival style!)).. So anyways I ended up doing a big stack on my stomach and slid down superman style for a little bit. Knocked the wind out of my and I think I seriously cracked a rib :( up until today its still a bit sore :(..

Here's a night shot I took in the Whistler Village. We thought we'd go down there and watch the UFC 66 fight between Tito Ortiz and Chuck Liddell, but I guess so did everyone else in the whole village, and it turned out every bar had a huge lineup!.. Not to mention we had to wait 1 and a half hours for each restaurant.. so ended up walking around to kill time and then ended up at the Keg steakhouse to make use of my nice $75 voucher I got as a Christmas present from my boss :D..

The traffic was CRAZY driving back from Whistler on New Year's day. It took seriously 1 1/2 hrs to move 10 km's out of the main Whistler village entrance! :(.. overall over 4 1/2 hrs to get back to Vancouver when on a "normal" day it would take less than 2 hrs!.

Here's a shot of a snow plough! It's kinda a small one though as the "proper" ones are HUGE!

Christmas Dinner!!!

2007-01-08T09:58:00.000+04:00

Well I was fortunate enough to be able to spend Christmas with my cousin's, and aunt's here. Check out the amazing turkey and ham!

Sleepless in Seattle

2007-01-07T08:07:00.000+04:00

So Amy and I decided to take a trip down to Seattle for a few days. Mainly to do some outlet shopping, and also to try and track down an elusive pair of Smith Turbo Fan goggles that I had absolutely no luck in finding within Vancouver. Thanks to Lynnette, we managed to get an awesome deal at the Renaissance Marriot Hotel in downtown Seattle.

So we set off on our road trip, and shortly after passing the border into Washington, what a better way to take a break, but to stop at you guessed it... Krispy Kreme!!! :)

Well... well... what do we have here?!?

Krispy Kreme's Finest!

Now on to down town Seattle!.. due to lots of running around at all the premium shopping outlets, I really didn't get much time to do a lot of sight seeing. Of the little time I did I managed to sneak in a few shots of the Seattle tower.

On the last day, we managed to take a look down at the pier. Lots of Clam Chowder to be had along here!...

Here's a shot of one of the pier locals! :)

I got a chance to visit the famous Pike Place Markets as well!

This is the famous Pike Place Fish Company. Whenever an order is made the sales guys put on a fish throwing show, and literally throw your purchase from the surrounding crowd area into the middle!

Hockey Eh?

2007-01-07T07:58:00.000+04:00

Ok.. I guess after everyone bugging me to update my site I finally managed to get the time to do it after all the festivities of the past few weeks.

Well lets see where I last left off... I was fortunate enough to receive some hockey tickets to the Vancouver Canucks vs Phoenix Coyotes match a few weeks ago. I was SOOOOOoo excited as it would be my FIRST MAJOR sporting event since being here.. and to top it off the seats were 6 rows back from the front! (Thanks Rick!!) so anyways, here are a couple of shots from the night... I was lucky to have been able to sneak my DSLR in as I found out later that your not meant to bring any "pro cameras" in :).. Oh and the Canucks ended up winning!.

Snow in Vancouver!.. What The?!?

2006-11-29T00:40:00.000+04:00

So.. from everyone that I've talked to in Vancouver, whenever I asked them if it snows at all in the city I was disappointed when they told me that it was very rare that it did, and even when it did, it was extremely little amounts of snow. Well to my amazement! I think I've shocked everyone that I know in Vancouver with my presence!! It seems as soon as I landed, they started getting record breaking EVERYTHING!!.. to start.. the weather was EXTREMELY WET and WINDY! break record amounts of rainfall.. then they had the brown water problem which was record breaking, and NOW!.. they get RECORD SNOWFALL!! and I MEAN SNOW FALL!!!.. like 46cm worth!! in lower mainland VANCOUVER!!!..Shots taken below..

These shots below were taken at Minoru Park near Richmond (where I'm staying at the moment)

Well along with great snow comes GREAT snowboarding!! I was fortunate enough to pick up some REALLY cheap Helly Hansen gear at one of their clearance outlets.. Thanks Amy!.. I went up to Cypress Mountain with some of Amy's friends, Rick, Heidi, and Carmen.. we had an absolute blast! I was so happy to be able to pick up the sport sooo quickly!.. within 20mins or so Rick had me up on the Green downhill runs with the rest of them! I had a few big stacks, but with so much fresh powder it didn't really hurt at the time.. although as of writing this my WHOLE body is soooo sore! :(...muscles and all.. Now to get my own Board and Bindings!!!..

Here I am decked out in my new Snowboarding outfit :)..

Heidi, Rick, and Carmen

My attempt at making a Snow Angel :D

Finally experienced some SNOW!

2006-11-22T03:37:00.000+04:00

Ok so one positive thing about all this rain here in Vancouver, is that with it comes GREAT snow up in the mountains!!!.. my cousin's friend Amy, took me up to Grouse Mountain which is only about 20mins away from Vancouver city. We took the Gondola up to the top of it where we were greeted with some FRESH powder snow! :D..

Sorry about the quality of the pics but all I took with me was my Ixus 40 Happy Snap.. and to top things off.. the fog up there was pretty crazy so lighting wise it really sucked..

Dunno if there's anything I can do to clean up the noise Jamie? it was shot at iso 400 :(

and ofcourse I had to make me a SNOWMAN!!! :)

A week in Vancouver!

2006-11-22T03:16:00.000+04:00

Well I thought I should update you guys on things ... since its been just over a week since I arrived.. and also because Jamie has been bugging me for some new photos of the area! Basically the week has been WET! Vancouver has had some major rainfall records broken in the recent weeks. So much rain to the point that the water supplies here have been affected. The water has been "unsettled" and what they call Turbidity has affected the water so that when it comes outta the taps its BROWN! the majority of Vancouver and near by surrounding areas have been affected and the water authority has posted a Boil Water notification for households. Even places like Star bucks and other restaurants had to shut down during the worst periods because their water supplies were affected. To top things off, being human nature, everyone starts to panick and then rush down to the stores to buy up all the drinking water supplies. One of the large retail chains here called Costco had people lining up since 4am in the morning just so they could get in to buy some water!. There were reports that fights broke out amongst people in the mad rush as to who's water was who's! I think they did try and limit things to 1 bottle per person!..

So anyways here's a shot of the street where I'm at just to show you guys what the houses and things look like here..

Notice the HUGE drains along the roadsides! I'm surprised there hasn't been any accidents of cars backing out into them!..

Kudos Jamie!

2006-11-15T07:11:00.000+04:00

Jamie has kindly made this "Where is JHO" map for me !...

Finally in Vancouver!!!

2006-11-11T00:40:00.000+04:00

Well I've made it! After my super dramatic epic journey across the globe.. I've finally arrived in Vancouver!..However, where do I begin?!?.. Well I must say I've never had so much drama whilst flying until my trip from Dubai to JFK airport in New York. Mid way through the flight, I start seeing all these air hostesses crowding around me.. I thought for a minute that maybe I just got lucky!, but then realised that they were attending to a guy sitting right behind me who seemed to be passing in and out of consciousness. Then after a few minutes I here them paging over the intercom for any doctors/nurses/paramedics that may be on board the flight. Luckily there was a pudgy bald Indian man who claimed he was a doctor, and was able to attend to the poor chap. I think they must have given him some morphein or something like that to help him out. Luckily we were able to continue on to JFK, and once landing, the local JFK Paramedics rushed on to the plane to check the guy out. It turned out he was alright, but after waiting for about an hour whilst they questioned him, asked where he was from, etc, etc they finally decided to let the rest of us off the plane. Wow! how exciting! So now my next problem was getting my connecting flight to Vancouver from La Guardia airport!.. Fortunately for me this was fairly easy as they had a shuttle bus that got me there for only $13 USD. Some shonky Italian mafia looking guy wanted to take me in a limo for like $65 USD. Seems like they have a lot of the Italian Mafia working at the aiport! as the bus driver that took me and a few others to La Guardia looked like he just stepped out from the Sopranos!. So I get on to my flight from La Guardia which goes to Vancouver via Denver, Colorado, and after 20 minutes of flying I hear again a page over the intercom for a Doctor or Nurse on the plane!!! WHAT!! twice in the same day on 2 different planes!! whats going on!??!.. it turns out that some girl had an epileptic seizure of some sort...only problem is that the captain and the doctor on board had decided that it was in their best interest to land the plane!!.. so now we ended up landing in Indianapolis airport. Originally the captain said we'd only be there for a "few minutes" whilst they disembarked the passenger, etc, but that turned out to be like 1 1/2 hrs!! as they ended up having a great amount of paper work to get through. So we get back up in the air and arrive at Denver airport where about 90% of the passengers on the plane had either missed or had to be rebooked onto connecting flights. I was one of them, and my flight onwards to Vancouver was booked for me, however I had to run like crazy to the gate, which luckily for me was only 3 gates down from the one we landed at. I made it with 2 minutes to spare as they closed the door behind me. One thing went through my mind however, How were they going to get my BAGS onto this plane?!?!.. as we literally landed like 3 minutes before I thought "oh great" now I'm gonna have the problems of not having my bags with me and having to wait a day or so to get them in Vancouver!.. So thank God, nothing went wrong with the flight to Vancouver, even though it was quite empty.. which was good as there was not much line at immigration. I got my working visa fairly easily and low and behold as I stepped out from the immigration area to the luggage belt.. there were my BAGS!!! woohoo! And to top things off.. I found out that I could log on to an unsecured wireless network from my Aunt's place! so FREE wireless internet!!

Well I got in touch with a recruiter here and have organised a meeting with her next week to find out some job opportunities.. Fingers crossed I hope things all go well! just have to look at getting an apartment now!!.. Oh and the WEATHER SUCKS!! nothing but RAIN!!! ARGH!!!

until next time!!.. sorry I have no pictures with this update but I think I have more than enough to keep you guys entertained!

Braving the Heat!

2006-11-07T11:52:00.000+04:00

Just thought I'd post this shot of some locals braving the heat... I really do give them credit!.. it was VERY HOT! that day. I think I'm coming down with something :(.. all this in and out of aircon areas to the extreme heat is making me sick I think :(... just gonna try and rest it off today...

Buildings around Town!

2006-11-07T11:32:00.000+04:00

On the way to the Mall of the Emirates I got a chance to take some snaps of some of the buildings on Al Zayeh Road.. which is kind of the main road in Dubai.. its LONG as!...

The building on the left is the Dusit Dubai Hotel.

I think this one was the Shangrila Hotel.. I could be wrong though!

Here are some shots of the world famous Burj Al Arab... that 7 Star sail boat hotel you always here about.

Mall of the Emirates!

2006-11-07T09:53:00.000+04:00

Ok.. so I thought I'd go check out the Mall of the Emirates... since everyone is telling me I had to. This place is currently the Largest shopping centre in Dubai. Yup there were right.. IT'S HUGE!!! I ended up spending about 8 hrs walking around whilst waiting to meet up with my dad that night.. I can say is that my legs turned to jelly after about 4 hrs of walking :(.. Here's some pics of the awesome architecture of the mall.

Here's one for the girls :D

Did anyone say they wanted to do some skiing in the middle of the desert?!? well you can in this place!.. It costs 140 AED (Durhams which is about 45 bucks Aussie) for 2 hours and thats to hire all the gear. Apparently you need to take 5 lessons before they let you on the main slope however.. I think its about 775 AED for that (so about AUD $250)

Over the Top!

2006-11-06T07:25:00.000+04:00

Ok.. one thing I've noticed here with Dubai.. is that when they do something.. they REALLY do something.. I mean I'm talking about the shopping malls. If these guys want to stand out.. they win.. hands down. Last night I went to one of the shopping malls here.. I think it was called Ibn Battuta (spelling?), and mind you it was not the biggest one here (I'm saving that one for today!)..So anyways.. the thing about this mall, is that they have various sections, and each section is themed to something.. like Tunisia, Egypt, China, India and you can really see the difference when walking from one area to the other.. so enjoy.. I took a few snaps below!..

This is a shot of the Star Bucks in the India Section..

Here's a shot of the Egypt section..

The shots below were from the China section!...

Fins is one of the many restaurants in the mall...

This Wonderful place called Dubai!

2006-11-05T11:34:00.000+04:00

Well I have finally done it.. and I have found my way to Dubai. I arrived at 6am Dubai time this morning after a nice 12 hr flight from Perth. Emirates is a great airline.. surprisingly the food was ok, they served some smoked salmon which tasted alright. In flight entertainment was pretty good as well as the plane was decked out with the individual entertainment units. I'll have to compare how the 777 is to the airbus 340 that I got on the way here. Now on to Dubai airport!.. man that thing is HUGE!!! from when we touched down, I think we were taxiing for like 20 mins just to get the parking area for the plane. Then we had to catch buses from the tarmac to the arrivals hall which was like another good 20 mins away. I've never seen so many Emirates planes in my life!! didn't manage to get a snapshot of the airport though.. was kinda in a rush to find my way around to immigration. I was really surprised that clearing immigration and customs was a snap! No arrival form to fill out as is more common with other countries.. I just handed the guy my passport and that was it. Well Dad picked me up from the airport, and drove me back to his apartment. Seems the drivers are as bad as everyone tells me however I still don't think its as bad as the driving in Bangkok.. now that is BAD!... one problem with arriving so early is that I gotta wait till the shops open at around 10ish.. but anyways I'll be catching up with a mate Dion who used to be from Perth and now DJ's in Dubai.. Here's some pics I took today.. The pic on the top left is the Burjuman.. supposedly some posh place that only sells top label gear.

This is a snap shot of the some of the buildings around me.

This is a view from inside my dad's apartment. They're pretty much like hotel apartments here.

This is another set of apartments across the road.