Blog Wars: The Return of the Candy Van

Previously, on Blog Wars:

“The top of Whistler was intensely foggy …"

“We also had Beaver Tails, at Whistler."

“Suddenly he pitches forward, goes head-over-heels, twists to the side, gets his skis utterly mangled and twisted off his feet, then hits the ground face down and slides down a bit, ending up lying with his face in the snow. "

And now, the thrilling conclusion ...

Harley lay face down in the snow, perfectly still. 

Dave chuckled briefly at Harley’s spectacular fall, then paused. Harley still hadn’t moved. 

Surely it wasn’t that bad? Nothing was bent the wrong way; there wasn’t any blood. How hard could he have fallen?

Dave slid down the slope towards Harley, feeling somewhat concerned … 

To be continued, after the break … 

*     *     *

Poo Poo Point

This was another hike. There was no poo at the point, but there was a dunny.

The description said ~7 miles roundtrip, and an elevation gain of about 1800 feet. 

I was thinking it would be a moderate hike. 

It turned out to be pretty hard on the way up, cos it was rather steep, and my goodness, was it humid. 

Yuck. 

When we finally got to the point, after the discussion going every which way, this was the view:

Hey, a cricket pitch at the top!

How ‘bout that.

The mountain was also in lockdown:

No one can steal it now

On a more serious note, you should never launch from here whilst horses are present. 

DO NOT

Seriously. 

Lachlan imagined someone launching themselves on a paraglider, and then seeing a horse coming up behind them, which conjured up an image in my head of someone flying through the skies on a hanglider, and a horse following them, with glowing red eyes and screeching like the winged mounts of the Nazgul. 

Needless to say, we did not launch from there. 

*     *     *

“Harley!” Dave called out as he slid downwards. “You alright man?"

*     *     *

Matt. He does food reviews.

Matt’s Food Reviews #2

Eye of newt, tail of beaver ...

Reese’s Pieces Beaver TailAfter the nasty initial experience I had with Canadian food, I was still determined to continue on my quest to unofficially become an official Canadian. My next goal was to eat a beaver tail, and even though I was disappointed by the fact that the dish was not the meaty tail of a beaver as I had initially thought, the idea of a fried pastry smothered with chocolate hazelnut spread, peanut butter, and Reese’s Pieces on a wintery Canadian night was still highly appealing.
The pastry lent a surprisingly delicate and aromatic flavour, complimented with the richness of the chocolate and peanut butter. As it was cold outside, the heatiness of the beaver tail was surprisingly more than welcome. Throughout my slow savouring of the beaver tail, the pastry had remained delightfully crispy.

Rating 3/5

Based on that review Matt, I would try it, and I probably should have cos I was there, but hey. 

*     *     *

“Yeah, I’m fine,” replied Harley.

[Sorry, but it literally was that anti-climatic in real life, too]

Basically, Harley’s skis ended up like this:

and his pants ended up like this:

Best crash of the weekend, I say. 

10/10 would crash again.

Border Crossing, Season 2

We returned to the US, and Harley swore he’d kill anyone who made a terrorist joke whilst at the border. 

There is a longer tale here, but I won’t go into it. 

One highlight of our thrilling adventure at the border was that when the officer was checking our passports, he was standing at the side door, and I was sitting in the seat at that door. Thus, he handed me passports to pass to people deeper in the van. He also checked things with me, like: 

Officer [holds up Shay’s passport, looks at it, then faces it to me]: “That guy?"

Me [pointing to Shay, sitting directly behind me]: “Him"

Officer [does the same with Frank’s passport]: “That guy?"

Me [pointing to Frank, sitting next to Shay]: “Him right there"

Mate, they’re both in front of you. They have easy-to-pronounce names. 

Sloppy effort.

1/10 would not cross again.

The Return of the Candy Van

Sadly, the Candy Van had to be returned. 

Harley mourns his loss ... and then celebrates cos he doesn't need
to drive that thing ever again.

This signaled the end of our Whistler adventures. 

Harley thoroughly enjoyed looking through available cars to rent next, although was not allowed to choose a Dodge Challenger. 

He settled for a Cruze, which is yet unnamed.

Australia Day Part 1

This was fantastic. 

Beautiful sunny winter’s day, classic Australia. 

Beautiful view from Beth’s swanky apartment, where we could see the Olympic range and Mt Rainier:

This is Mt Rainier. It looms. It is enormous.

Seriously, if this thing had a pointy top it could be the Lonely Mountain.
Or if there were dark storm clouds, Orodruin.

The Olympic Mountain range behind Seattle

Sunset over the ocean .... behind a city. 

We had Tim Tams and Caramello Koalas:

A little taste of home

And Fosters, whatever that is:

Seriously, what is this thing? Anyone

And what’s more Australian than tacky Australian flag tattoos?

Karl may not be the prettiest lady, but he can act fairly
Aussie for a French-German-Vietnamese-... for an international person

Someone out of Beth, Zoe and Andrew burnt the pavlova, and the others turned it into a salad:

It did taste good

Meanwhile, at Microsoft we played backyard cricket on Australia Day, but without a wheelie bin:

What a boss.

And in my home town of Engadine, people held a thong-throwing competition.

We’re an excitable nation. 

The best part of the Australia day cricket match (other than Tony Abbott setting a record for Most Comedians Put Out Of A Job) was that all the Americans held the cricket bat like a baseball bat, and tried to catch the ball like a baseball. 

This was hilarious. 

Will and I, just standing there shaking our heads at the person who brought along a baseball glove, and is trying to catch the ball backhanded.

It might work in baseball, but in cricket, the only way to catch is to dive for it.

Portland

This hasn’t happened yet, but it will soon … 

Two great forces, colliding head to head … 

American unipiping goes head-to-head with Australian bagcycling … 

The biggest showdown of the decade ...

I’m missing the SuperBowl for this, and you know what?

I don’t give a damn, cos I’m playing the bagpipes on a unicycle!

I’ll miss the final match in an overly large, stupidly hyped competition, between two teams throwing a ball on and off for five hours, and I don’t care, cos I’m playing off against the Unipiper!

Seriously. 

Which would you rather watch? 

Something that has happened every year for the past far-too-long?

Or a duel between two legendary foes?

Yeah. 

Thought so.

Blog Wars: Whistler Strikes Back

Firstly, petrol prices here. 

I saw a gallon of petrol, not gas but petrol cos it’s a liquid, for $2.01 USD.

Add 10% tax, convert to Aussie, it’s still cheaper.
That explains the war in Iraq

Secondly, Americans are little-endian when it comes to bananas. 

This is wrong.

We should wage war with them.

I told my family how Americans open bananas, and they just laughed. 

There is an obvious handle for opening bananas. And they don’t use it.

They squeeze the other end, and hold it by the 'obviously a handle' end.

I called my family, when my sister had returned from southern Asia and my whole family was all together. I was talking to Natalie, and at one point she says, “Alison’s here if you wanna talk to her."

“Aw yeah, put her on."

“She just said, ‘Why would he wanna talk to me?'"

Ah, my family loves our togetherness.

Alright, Whistler Adventures Round Two!!!

The Slopes

I was inclined to go down them most of the time. 

Well, no matter which way you point a snowboard it’s inclined to go down a hill. They are kinda annoying like that. 

Ways in which snowboards suck:

- they slide all the damn time

- you cannot stand still without unclipping your foot

- walking doesn’t work well

- flat ground is the worst

Ways in which snowboards are cool:

- you feel a million times more awesome when you pull off sharp turns and skids

- you’re just cooler in general

Snowboarding down Blackcomb mountain was pretty cool. The green tracks are long and windy, with large low-gradient sections that give a really scenic view out across the valley … when it isn’t foggy.

Scenery!

More scenery!

Caradhras Galadhon

Dang, I loved these views

Then The Fellowship of the Ring, the Dream Team themselves, went up Whistler, to the very top … after taking the gondola from half way up Blackcomb, across the valley, to halfway up Whistler. 

The Fellowship: 

Bumblebee - aka Harley Adams, who wore the camera half the time and raced behind us to get all the good bails stacks on camera.

The Dark Knight - moi. I was rather distinct in my indistinctness; completely black, except for polarized lenses. 

P!nk - Chris, who asked me to buy him a hot pink ski jacket. So I did. 

The SpeedBlitz Blue - Will, my fellow Aussie, who skied well and crashed well.

P!rple - Jenna, who ran afoul of Chris's 'maneuverability' more than once.

The Fellowship, at the top of Whistler

What was left of the Fellowship, at the bottom of Blackcomb

The top of Whistler was intensely foggy … so foggy, in fact, that I could not see 50 metres in front of me, or indeed the bumps and dips in the snow! 

This proved … interesting.

Quality vision

Notice how you can't see what is snow and what is fog?
Neither could I.

This is not just MS paint with the grey colour, this is a photo.

I’m scooting along, kinda just hoping that nothing is in front of me, seeing only white, and a small purple blob ahead of me (Jenna). I don’t know if I’m about to go off a cliff, or what. 

And what a journey. 

So on Steven’s Pass, and Crystal, some of the runs were decently long, taking ~10min to complete, gunning it the whole way. 

These took upward of twenty, gunning it the whole way. 

Dayumn. 

Whistler was a huge trip down, not least because I hit loads of flat ground and got stuck on my stupid snowboard. 

Finally made it past that, and hit icy snow, no powder whatsoever. Ouch.

With a bruised butt, I get past that, see a flat and a chair lift and think, the end, oh joy!!

….. only to realize that I was still several runs from the bottom. 

Ugh. 

It was really enjoyable though. 

Before that, though, we hired our gear from the chateau. 

When we were hiring the gear, and the people there serving us were talking to us, I was trying to place someone’s accent, and it took me a while before I thought, “I can’t hear any accent on them."

Then I realised what that meant, and then noticed it on many others. 

There were loads of Aussies there, including one girl from Inaburra High School (which won’t mean much to some, but to others - small world, eh?), and I immediately thought, I’m home!

Ah, so good to hear that comforting Australian accent. 

Canadian Food Reviews:

I went to the city with Matt a while back, and he was really excited to try poutine, whatever the heck that is. 

Me, being me, got all excited too: “Food. There. Cheap. Go."

When we stopped in Vancouver for dinner, Matt had poutine.

Harley's review of poutine: "meat, cheese curds, chips, gravy"

Matt's review of Vladimir Poutine: ... Actually, no, I'll clarify first. Matt is our group's foodie. So in Canada I asked him to give me a 100 word review of Putin and this is what he said.

Matt. He does food reviews.

Matt’s Food Reviews #1

In Soviet Russia, Poutine eats you

Philly Cheesesteak Poutine
The first of the three quintessential Canadian foods is the dish known as poutine. While the classic poutine consists of fries, brown gravy, and cheese curds, the one I had bought came adorned with ribbons of shaved beef. Despite opting for the slightly Americanized version of the Canadian dish, my friend reassures me that it is common to see stalls selling variations of poutine.
It only took a few mouthfuls before the food became hard to swallow. The brininess of the gravy was dominant in every bite, and I found it difficult to taste any of the other key ingredients.

Rating: 1/5

Based on that review, Matt, I would not bother eating this.

We also had Beaver Tails, at Whistler. Given that some cultures eat chicken legs, I did not think it weird for these to actually be beaver tails, as Andrew the Canadian man said. 

Matt also reviewed this, and this will come in a later episode.

More Gridiron

So, that game I mentioned last time. 

I watched it in a pub with some other interns and a bajillion other people.

What a boring, stupid game.

I’ll just spoil it now and get it over with. 

Seattle won. 

It was about 45 min in (game minutes, not actual minutes), and Seattle was losing by two tries (or touchdowns, which is like a try but you don’t touch the ball down to the ground. Go figure). It was pretty much over for them. 

Then it got tense. 

About half an hour later, Seattle scored a couple of tries touchdowns, and overtook the other team …..

Then they came back and made it a tie. 

There were two minutes left on the clock (yes, that’s right, I’m adding correctly). 

Twenty to twenty five minutes later, the game ended. 

Seriously. 

There was overtime, due to the tie, but the last two minutes just went on and on. That is the most stop-start game ever. 

The team will huddle and discuss what they will do, then they get together, and ready the ball. The clock starts. 

One bloke throws the ball backwards to another, who stands there and looks for a third bloke to throw it to. Often he’ll find someone, throw it, and they’ll get tackled. 

That’s about 5-10 seconds of gameplay. 

Then the clock stops. 

Repeat process. 

For an hour. 

An entire hour, split into 10 second chunks. 

Who the hell goes to watch this game live? 

Watching golf would be more interesting that this. 

To be fair, cricket is slow, but the clock keeps going. And they rack up points at a higher rate, too.

More Whistler

I had bacon for breakfast. 

Canadian bacon.

Man, I want a bacon weave of that stuff. 

Here is where we stayed in the chateau.

The base of the red light is our room

I’ll use Whistler Round 3 to wrap up everything, but I must mention this now: 

It's third day of whistler, on the final run. We were on a small stretch of blue, and Harley was ahead of me, skiing down. Suddenly he pitches forward, goes head-over-heels, twists to the side, gets his skis utterly mangled and twisted off his feet, then hits the ground face down and slides down a bit, ending up lying with his face in the snow. 

Perfectly still.

...

...

...

To hear the epic conclusion to this tale, tune in next time for Blog Wars: The Return of the Candy Van!!

Blog Wars: A New Holiday

Canadia!!!
It's the same region as the US.
BUT YOU KNOW WHAT??

They are freaking sensible.
They have metric. They have Centigrade. Their prices include tax. They have proper gun laws, that restrict the use of deadly weapons. And if you die in Canada, you die in real life.
America, this country is next door to you. Can you not see how wonderful their base 10 system is?

Ok, I’ll give context. 

Whistler, Part 1

We went to the Whistler Ski Resort this past weekend, and stayed in the Fairmont Chateau. This is one of the swankiest hotels I’ve stayed in, which doesn’t say much, I think. 

But still. 

Check out dat swank bro

This was our backyard:

Our backyard at nighttime.

That’s the ski slope. 

Yeah. 

Expensive, but worth it.

Everyone was so scared that we would get hurt, and the recruiters were constantly reminding us to be safe and not injure ourselves skiing.
I wrote that sentence before we left.

Now upon return I write:
We got hurt.
I took some nasty head and gut hits, and my butt is fairly bruised. Harley took a serious tumble and tore open his pants in an unfortunate spot, with his skis ending up like this:

More to come on this epic stack

Did we get hurt?

Yes.

Did we get badly hurt?

No.

Do I regret any of my snowboarding?
No.

Snowboarding was hard, but excellent fun. I teach myself using genetic algorithm-like techniques: try several things, and whichever works the best, use that as the base technique and vary it slightly to see how to snowboard best. 

It works, after a while. 

The snow was thick and powdery AND HOLY COW SNOW EVERYWHERE. 

SNOW!!

SNOW!!!

I ain’t gonna get over it soon. 

There’s a lot to say, and it will come in sections in future posts, as the title suggests. To kick off episode one, let us introduce our characters:

Firstly, The Great Harley Adams. He drove us the whole way there and back, safely piloting a twelve seater Candy Van along wet, winding and icy roads. What a froffin' mad dog. 

For all his driving skills, he doesn't hold camera poses
long enough and I end up with loads like this

Next, DJEnna, who was in charge of the music for the whole trip, and skipped many rubbish songs of Chris’s, and many quality songs of mine. Still, she did a good job. Kudos, Jenna. 

I swear, I have never seen her without that beanie.
Maybe it isn't a beanie; maybe that's her head.

The pit crew: 

Chris, the other snowboarder, the man in pink himself. You tore down the slopes and thankfully didn’t tear up your ligaments. Despite a terrible taste in music, you provided moral support … no, actually, you didn’t. Why am I saying this? 

Dishonourable mention for ditching us on every slope and crashing into Jenna. 

One of the few other beards around the place, though.
I will give him that.

Shay, who was not recognized by Border Security for a hilarious moment. You gave skiing a solid effort in a onesie and must be commended.

AkShak McOnesie

Matt, who got excited at all the food to try. You’ll get a bigger spot in future posts with your food reviews, so I’ll say no more now. 

Poutine, Beaver Tails, Tim Horton's ... the list goes on

Frank, who gave skiing a solid effort too. I actually did not spend loads of time with you on the slopes (not out of spite), so I have no idea as to your progress, but I’m sure progress happened. 

Shay clearly wants Frank's spotlight

The support crew:

Will, the SpeedBlitz Blue, who spoke to me endearingly when I got sick of American accents and needed to be reminded of home again.

He wore that jumper the entire time, I reckon

Anna, who refused to share Felix with us. 

This is Anna. She is not an elf, despite dreams otherwise.

Felix, who didn’t have much say in the matter. 

Oh Felix. We would write poetry about you and sing it outside
your window all day, but you refused to listen.

Andrew … our token Canadian man, who had never been to this part of the country before. We had met you literally 24 hours before this trip, and then I had to share a bed with you. I feel like that violates a life lesson or something, but hey, I survived, right?

Andrew ... the man, the legend.

To start our trip, we piled into the Candy Van, a 12 seater van that deserved the name. 

Road trip!!!

Before road trip start

A few hours later

Several hours later, we crossed the Canadian border fairly painlessly, and saw signs in metric!!!

It was wonderful. 

Dinner in Vancouver was nice, and we saw wild Segways roaming the streets. 

Melbourne, right?

Harley enjoying his burger and enormous regular fries

Will out on the streets

I'm in another country!!!

They have bilingual road signs around the place, but not French. I think it’s Cree, but I could be wrong. We are heading to Skiwkw. I have no idea how to pronounce either, and I really wanna know how one pronounces the ‘7’. 

I really wanna hear that said out loud

Vancouver Review:

Vancouver felt a lot like Melbourne. Coffee-hipster zone, not too dirty, rather up-to-date. From my very brief and limited experience it was kinda like an inland colder Seattle.

We arrived safely, and sorted out rooms, and immediately went out onto the roof and got in trouble with security. Classic Aussies (and Kiwis). 

The entrance to the Chateau

There are many more stories to the Canadian trip, and I have lots of material this week, so that’s part one. Tune in next week for more Whistler adventures!!

Now, on with the show … 

PB&J
So in Australia, when I was growing up I would have peanut butter and honey sandwiches every day. I still do. Second only to Vegemite, it's an iconic Aussie food.
And Americans don't know of it.
I first discovered this at Orion Health, where I worked with two Sri Lankans, an Indonesian, an Indian, a Canadian-Lebanese, and a whole lotta Kiwis. And some Aussies. And the Canadian girl ate PB&J[am, not jelly]. I would eat PB&H, and she thought I was weird, and everyone backed me up and said that America was weird and Canada followed.
I ate PB and jam there, cos she dared me, and it was alright. This was with a sensible ratio of bread to spread, and with jam.
I just tried PB&J. I wouldn't mind having some bread with it, next time.
The bread was literally 10mm thick, not that Americans know what that means. But it was drowned in peanut butter and this ... gelatinous ... substance ... that glows with a radioactive brightness and contains enough sugar to power New York for a week. I think they called it jelly.
It also had apple and banana.
Not nice.
Not a good sandwich.
Then we asked about proper Jelly, like Aeroplane Jelly jelly, and they said that was Jell-O.
We asked if they ate it with ice cream, like normal humans.
They thought we were weird.

Backwards continent. 

US Sports again
So we had an intern whirly ball comp, and my team, the mighty Thunder Down Under, tied first, whatever Jenna and Will might say. This was due to our clearly superior strategy of having strikers and defenders, like soccer, rather than general chaos, like Gridiron seems to resemble (For American viewers, 'gridiron' is what we call your 'football', because a) it is barely played with the feet, and b) there are other types of football in the world, you know).
I would also like to point out that we a) had a better Whirly ball score than Karl's team, and he is no longer the prettiest lady, and b) we beat Sarah's team by a significant margin. Just had to rub that in one more time.

Gridiron

There was another game on Sunday. That was the semis. 

The run-down of the game shall come in future Whistler posts, cos I watched it there. This was the NFC. 

And then the winners of the AFC and the NFC play together.
What do those things stand for, I hear you ask?
National Football Conference and American Football Conference.
Cos National is different to American .... ?
Yeah, I think it's dumb too.

And you know what?
Early on, there were multiple NFCs throughout the country, that not every state was involved in. National comps that were not national.

America, do you not understand the inconsistency?

You also have the World Series for baseball, which ........ is played in only one country. The Untied States.

And I thought our drop-bear hunting competitions were stupid.

Speaking of drop bears ...
(Sorry, Sarah, but I simply cannot resist saying this)
Achievement Unlocked: Convinced an American that drop bears are real!
I am so proud of this.
But wait, there's more.
Not only did I achieve that, she then went and told her friends ... and convinced them! Do I get a bonus for each extra person?

Now I just need to convince Americans that Tony Abbott is real ....

However, as Ford pointed out, the actually real animals in Australia are indeed far scarier and deadlier than drop bears. Have you seen a bunyip attack its prey? Geez.

And the locals. After the drop-bears, I tried to convince Sarah that the boomerang was a weapon, but I'm not sure she believed that one. I think I've become the Boy who cried Wolf. Or Teddy from Memento. Don't believe his lies.

But you know what?
This, from Wikipedia, the source of all knowledge:
"A boomerang is a thrown tool, typically constructed as a flat aerofoil, that is designed to spin about an axis perpendicular to the direction of its flight.
A returning boomerang is designed to return to the thrower.
It is well known as a weapon used by Indigenous Australians for hunting"
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boomerang)

Oh snap.
I'm not a liar after all (some of the time)
I'm honest, which is worse than dishonest, cos you can never tell when I'm going to do something incredibly ... stupid.

To end this ramble, this is what we have in our foyers at work. Just hanging around.

Master Chef, American Elevator

Life-sized