July 17th, 2008, 7 Comments »
Down the street from our apartment in Victoria, there’s a hilariously dangerous rope swing rigged up in the front yard of a house:
It seems like an invitation for disaster, doesn’t it?
This, incidentally, is the first photo I took with the camera on my new iPhone.
July 12th, 2008, 18 Comments »
I woke up unusually early this morning, and went for a little bike ride. I figured I’d breeze past the Fido store to inquire about timelines and waiting lists for getting an iPhone. To add a tiny complaint to the monumental PR fiasco that the iPhone Canada build-up and launch has been, Fido’s website shows the wrong operating hours for their Yates St. store.
When I got home, one of our neighbours was out in the back lane washing his fancy BMW. It occurred to me–not for the first time–that if you can afford a Beemer, you can afford to pay somebody else to wash it.
When we owned a car–a cheesy little Chevy Metro–we lived in an apartment. We (too rarely) took our car to the car wash because there wasn’t really an alternative.
So, I can think of only two reasons why my neighbour manually washes his own car:
So, pray tell, do you like washing your car?
April 23rd, 2008, 12 Comments »
Please answer the following question concerning your GP or ‘family doctor’:
I’ll be needing a new doctor in Victoria sooner or later, and paused to consider whether I’d, uh, consider a female doctor. I’ve always been to male doctors, but that’s kind of been by default. I’m curious to see how common the practice is. Gillian’s post in which she sees her male doctor reminded me about this.
RSS subscribers, this blog post contains a poll. Please consider visiting my site to participate. Or just carry on. Whichever.
April 18th, 2008, 4 Comments »
Forgive the, uh, narrowcasting of this particular entry, but we’re looking for a dentist. We don’t have many requirements, except that they shouldn’t be a sadist, and should be located within walking distance of downtown or Cook Street Village.
If you live in Victoria and like your dentist, leave a comment or email me at darren at darrenbarefoot (full stop) dot com.
February 18th, 2008, 3 Comments »
About two weeks ago, I was anticipating a painful, tedious search for an apartment in Victoria, BC. In particular, I wasn’t looking forward to trying to rent a place from abroad. We didn’t mind doing it–we rented places in Malta and Morocco sight unseen–but we feared that landlords wouldn’t be down with that.
Thankfully, after only a couple of weeks, we’ve secured a furnished, two bedroom suite in a heritage house in Fairfield. I was somewhat worried about living in a small building, but the owner assured me that every is quiet and pretty much keeps to themselves. The place has a big office upstairs, and a large south-facing deck.
We had to lobby pretty hard to get the place, but I think my aunt sealed the deal. She did an inspection in our place, and talked us up to the owner. We’re taking her out for dinner when we get to Victoria.
And though I bemoaned Craigslist for its crappy interface, that’s where we found this place. So, Darren 0, Craigslist 1.
I put a few photos that the owner took up on Flickr.
February 5th, 2008, 18 Comments »
We’re looking for rental accommodation for the first time in nine years. I was really hoping that, in the interim, things in rental property search had improved. They have, but not as much as I’d hoped. Consider our options in Victoria:
The essential problem is that, unlike MLS.ca, there isn’t a one-stop rental site that lists every available apartment. I ought to be able to specify my requirements on such a site, and get notified when there are apartments which meet my criteria.
Instead there are a bunch of silos, and only one of them will let me know when there’s new apartments in the inventory.
Two other observations: it’s shocking that so few of the online listings have photos. Even more shocking is the dearth of email addresses for contacting people in the classifieds. Wouldn’t they prefer to receive and manage inquiries via email instead of with a barrage of phone calls?
For the record, we’re looking for a furnished, two-bedroom apartment within walking distance of downtown for less than CAN $1800, to rent as of March 15 or April 1. We want to live there for one to two years. I’ve rendered our ideal location in the magic of Google Maps:
Unless it’s exceptional, we don’t want to live in a suite in a house. I like the anonymity of apartments. We might consider renting an entire house, though that seems unlikely in this price range. Nice to haves include:
I’m not relishing the thought of searching and checking out a bunch of apartments in rental-starved Victoria. So if anybody finds us the apartment which we eventually rent, I’ll pay you CAN $150.
January 30th, 2008, 15 Comments »
A few people have expressed dismay about our moving to Victoria and not back to Vancouver. Somebody even told me in an email that “Victoria was lame”. Is it? Maybe a little, but we have fond memories of living there during university.
More practically, we’re returning to the West Coast to build a house on some land we have on Pender Island. There’s much better ferry access to Pender Island from the Victoria side than the Vancouver side. There are far more trips, and the trip is much shorter (45 minutes instead of a 2 hour multi-island milk run).
Assuming it’s not a total disaster, we’ll live in the house we built. For how long? That’s hard to say. We’re already talking about renting it out and living abroad again, so we might live there for 6 months or 16 years.
We do have plans to make very regular trips by ferry or seaplane to Vancouver, so Vangroovy is not getting rid of me quite that easily.
January 28th, 2008, 51 Comments »
UPDATE: After some confusion (see the comments), I’ve established that the cable provider is in fact Shaw, not Rogers, in Victoria. I’ve adjusted this post accordingly.
Maybe it’s just the plodding web access here in Morocco, but today I visited both Shaw and Telus’s websites today to scope out Internet access when we settle in Victoria in April of this year. They both offer a premium service at 5 or 6 MB/s and a 60 GB maximum per month for about $40 to $45 (before all those ridiculous extra fees). I assume there are discounts when you package Internet access with a landline (unlikely) or TV (likelier).
This is like voting for a prime minister in recent elections. Which is the least distasteful choice? I’ve complained (and heard many complaints) about both services in the past. Which is, uh, less worse? My criteria would probably be:
What would you recommend? Maybe I should just go with carrier pigeons?
When we lived in Yaletown, I could circumvent this sort of red-state, blue-state problem by voting independent and signing up with Novus. Are there any such alternatives in Victoria?
November 27th, 2007, 1 Comment »
Via Waxy, I read about a comedy troupe from Victoria, BC undertaking a rather unusual telethon. They’re playing Desert Bus, a hilarious anti-game that’s part of Penn & Teller’s Smoke and Mirrors, an unreleased video game from the mid-nineties. From Wikipedia:
The objective of the game is to drive a bus from Tucson, Arizona to Las Vegas, Nevada in real time at a maximum speed of 45mph, a feat that would take the player 8 hours of continuous play to complete, as the game cannot be paused.
The bus contains no passengers, and there is no scenery or other cars on the road. The bus veers to the right slightly; as a result, it is impossible to tape down a button to go do something else and have the game end properly. If the bus veers off the road it will stall and be towed back to Tucson, also in real time.
Thus far, they’ve raised nearly US $15,000 for Child’s Play, a charity started by gamers that raises money for “toys, games, books and cash for sick kids in children’s hospitals across North America and the world”. I sent them $10 just for their tenacity.
August 29th, 2007, 1 Comment »
The last person you expect to see is an international rock sensation.
Julie and I are with our friends Rob and Suze, and we’re wading around in the shadow of the spectacular azure window. We’re just on our way out when we pass a group on their way in. Suze points out that we’ve just walked past none other than Anthony Kiedis, lead singer of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and occasional nudist.
Rob snapped a surreptitious photo while I resisted the temptation to go over and ask him if Catholic school girls do, in fact, rule. It was a bit surreal, as it’s kind of the last place you expect to meet the guy who wrote, say, “Sexy Mexican Maid” or “Fight Like A Brave”.
I happened to see Mr. Kiedis and his girlfriend again today as they were riding a scooter down Republic Street in the island’s main town of Victoria. That dude has a lot of tattoos.
I saw over on Malta Forums that somebody scored an autograph.
In related photographic news, check out how I managed to ruin this perfectly lovely shot. That’s me with the snorkel. I did manage to compensate for it, though, by snapping this nice photo with Rob’s camera.