Pandora's Box of Fun Times

Hi Troopers. Seems like I just wrote my last blog, but it’s actually been a while, so I’ll crank out another. This one covers several topics, ranging from Halloween to quay adventures to Christmas feasts to a rousing rendition of “To Hell with the Devil” by the metal band Stryper. Oh baht deetchlaunt (or “haaa-lauw!” as my Mother would say). Such fun.

Let’s start with fall.


That was nice. Moving along…

At work each year we do a department theme and half-heartedly attempt to get into the spirit of Halloween by putting a bucket of candy at the reception desk. This year, in familiar cop-out style, we opted to dress as Secret Service/CIA/Men in Black/Blues Brothers/whatever else anyone thought we were.


My coworker/neighbour Sara, lookin’ all pro and whatnot.


Ms. Thang herself, reporting for bidness.

Our office neighbourhood neighbours, Employee Services, dressed up as a bees and decked out their office in hives.


This is (in my opinion) the Queen B(ee), my friend, Ms. Nancy V. (Hi Friend! Come back to work soon…)

The day after Halloween, our department went on our annual retreat into Vancouver for some development of the professional style. You may recall my blog last year titled, The Penthouse Suite in which we stayed at the Granville Island Hotel and certain shenanigans ensued. This year, we stayed at the Lonsdale Quay Hotel and while fewer shenanigans were caught on film, there were many shenanigans nonetheless.




This is Regina and Julie, in our pre-developing Starbucks break.


Sara O.

We got there early and decided to do a bit of exploring around the markets and then check into our hotel rooms.









Having been spoiled with the most awesome-est room last year, I was hoping for the African Junior Suite at the least. Well, I got stuck with a regular, boring, two queen-bed room. With a hideously-patterned window valance. Blah.



With a view of the tugboats.





Once the training session began, we did one of those (useless) team-building exercises that are supposed to get us to start the love-fest. I say useless because once the exercise is done, they tell you it was all for naught and you’ve won nothing. Boo. Our goal was to build a hotel. I was the architect. This was the result.



This was pretty hot business considering we only had five or ten minutes to build it. No big deal.

After our session, we had free time to mill about until dinner. I wandered through the shops with Regina and then headed back to my room to prep for dinner in the atrium.






This is the hotel/market from the waterfront.

The hotel gave us all rooms down this one long hallway in alphabetical order, so when we stuck our heads out the window, we could talk to each other. Here is Nicole and I giving it a test.





Dinner was in the atrium which had a great view of the skyline and the food was fantastic. From here, the party escalated and the wobbly-pops consumed became more apparent in certain characters.









As for me, I didn’t drink very much since the wine was in limited quantities (not to mention that this was a work function.) After some chats with my coworkers and some eavesdropping sessions on the people the next room, I was left to my own devices and desperately tried to make the best of my two-queen room – I designated one of the beds as the jumping bed, and one as the sleeping bed.






And nearly face-planted in the process. Fun.

The next day was breakfast and wrap-up, arriving home at lunch, on Friday. I did what any normal person who partied the night before would do, and slept…(End of department retreat.)

Fast forward two weeks and that brings me to Jean’s house, on a Thursday. She was wanting to decorate the Christmas tree already (a girl after my own heart!) so she was willing to feed and fund a swell pre-Christmas evening of fun.


Chili, nachos and cornbread! Yum!


The party crew: Jean, our new Japanese friend Maya, and Eric.



After the tree was, by and large, decorated, we started on the gingerbread house, of which I was, again, the designated architect.





The house above looks fairly close to the hottest gingerbread house I have seen this year, with one invisible problem in the roofing that I didn’t forsee…



And so, down it came. Poop sandwich. So the world has been spared several (if not many) crappy buildings since I became an accountant rather than an engineer. Let’s all thank the good Lord.

The next day, I rallied up my good old pals Jen and Rachel and we headed out for a night on the town, Japanese-style.


Okonomiyaki


Rachel + udon


Jen + temaki +nigiri

Next came the only logical thing…the most crazy-insane karaoke night of singing I had yet to experience in my 24 short years.









The pictures don’t show even a fraction of the debauchery that ensued. It is strange how certain songs make you…embarrass yourself? Anyways, it was a good time. Heart, Abba, Pussycat Dolls, and…Stryper? Yes. ‘To Hell With the Devil’ indeed.



Next week is the Spice Girls concert which I (unfortunately) committed to attend. Boo. After that is Christmas in MB, February in London, England, and wayyyy after that (next September), is my newest excursion (now confirmed) – a month in Tokyo, Japan. Sheesh, but yay! Come along, okay??

Read more...

The King's Black Whisky Bottle (Day 7 & 8)

I know that the as soon as you start saying that time flies, you are getting old. I know, because my mom says it all the time and she’s old. Well, older than me, anyways. In some ways, the trip did fly by, but mostly it feels as though we’d been gone forever. When you jam so many things into such a short period of time, it’s like that. But we had lots of ground to cover today, so we were up early and at Edinburgh Castle for 9:30 am, when it opened.



Edinburgh Castle is built on top of an extinct volcano and most of the buildings were built around the 16th century, with the exception of St. Margaret’s Chapel, which dates from the early 12th century (and we touched it! No big deal!)

When I thought about visiting the castle, I imagined a grand entrance hall, a massive grand staircase, and living quarters. Well, I was wrong. Perhaps my expectations were unfounded and I’d seen too many Disney movies (‘Beauty and the Beast’ stands out). Oh well. We did see some living quarters, but most of the castle buildings and grounds are now used for military purposes, which limited how much tourists can see.






This is Laich Hall, the dining hall of King James IV completed in 1511.


Mary, Queen of Scots


Out the window in the birth chamber where Mary, Queen of Scots gave birth to her only child, King James VI on June 19, 1566.








The above pictures are taken in the Great Hall, built in 1511 for important ceremonies and feasts, later to become a horse stable…and then back to a hall. (It depended on who was running the castle at the time.)

After looking over the mildly exciting things above, it was time to visit the Crown Room. Aw, I was so excited! Scotland has the only complete set of royal regalia in Europe and the oldest in the United Kingdom. The story of the jewels is actually a rather interesting one – I’d recommend a read sometime. After trucking through many hallways and up and down stairs and jamming my body through the crowds, I finally reached the dark Crown Room and pressed my face against the glass in awe. It all looked so…fake. They didn’t allow pictures of the goods, so here’s one I grabbed off the internet:



On display, they also had the giant “Stone of Destiny”, which is essentially a giant boulder which was used as a coronation seat of ancient Scottish kings. That definitely was not fake.









As the castle is/was a major stronghold and has been involved in many, many battles throughout history, it, of course, has a sketchy basement where they put prisoners of war.






Another prison



After we’d had enough of that, we headed back outside and headed down the castle rock to view the exterior.






This is Mon’s Meg – an enormous medieval siege cannon which fired a gunstone almost two miles. Last fired in 1681. No big deal.


This is St. Margaret’s Chapel, as mentioned earlier, built in the early 12th century. It’s tiny. We touched it.


Our tour guide said that the cannon’s were actually marine cannons, put up for cosmetic purposes only. He said that when a Queen visited, she mentioned that a castle doesn’t look right without cannons and should have some - voila! They marched some cannons right up there.


This is the Portcullis Gate, the impenetrable grid by which no party ever took Edinburgh Castle by force.





All in all, the castle was really interesting and kind of “must-see”, but for the price of 11 pounds (approx. $23 CDN), I wouldn’t be going again. I really do like the crown light posts on the esplanade though – I gotta get me some of those.

Immediately after busting out of the castle at noon-ish (as the throngs started to pour in), we headed on over to the Scotch Whisky Experience and were drinking whisky within minutes of arriving.







I was starving, and this was my lunch. Yum. The brand was called ‘Black Bottle’, and it tasted like flaming-hot smoke trickling down my throat. My belly heated me for the next hour.

The tour was actually really cool. They taught us how to drink whisky properly, how it’s made, the difference between single-malt and blended, and the history of whisky in Scotland. We even saw a ghost.




It was so dark in there, so it was hard to get a decent picture of the sucker. But that’s him above.

After we went on our little trolley car ride through the place, we were outta there like a shot, our free drams in hand. We headed back to the hostel for lunch and then back onto the street to do last-minute souvenir shopping and I wanted to buy some…stuff.



At about 3:30, we wandered past a Chinese buffet place (anyone who knows me and Jean, knows we can’t resist jamming our faces at Chinese buffets) and hummed and hawed until we decided to give in and eat a reeeeally early supper (because we are too cheap to pay dinner buffet prices).


Now, by looking on Jean’s plate, you will notice onion rings, French fries, and curry. Well, this place was sort of half-chinese, half-indian food. And then some other stuff thrown in. Nothing fantastic – at least we didn’t pay the dinner rate.

After dinner and more shopping, we headed home early to pack up and get ready for tomorrow’s early morning.



Let me tell you a bit about our hostel, since I haven’t mentioned much this far. We stayed at the Castle Rock Hostel for the rock-bottom price of 11 pounds a night. We were in a dorm room with six girls, two of whom we really liked and chatted up a storm with. They were Australian girls traveling all over creation and the one girl worked at Tiffany’s and was telling us about how she buys their jewelry for 50-90 percent off. We highly considered switching careers then and there. For all your prospective workers out there, consider what I’ve just said here. Anyways, I’m digressing…

There were lots of people staying at the hostel who were highly skilled in the art of douchebaggery (thanks Q). While it did feel like living in a giant dorm (complete with people making-out in the kitchen), they had cheap laundry, internet and charged your electronics for free. I gotta admit, I was worried when we checked in and Jean was assigned the bunk called “Bigus Dickus”. Plus, the view out our window wasn’t bad.



We did end up head out later that night, our destination: Dirty Hookers. There was a restaurant called ‘Filthy McDirty’s’ or something like that, but I consistently, from here on out, refer to it as ‘Dirty Hookers’. What? They had chocolate fondue I wanted to try. When we arrived, it was closed for some strange reason (why is a place called ‘Dirty Hookers’ closed at 9 PM?) Anyways, we ended up heading over to Sainsbury for some snacks and we were happy. Jean bought a cheesecake which she started in the evening and we finished up the following morning.



For the last time, Goodnight Scotland…


Good Morning to officially the crappiest day of any trip – the long travel home. The adventure is over, the torture begins. We decided that it would be best to try and make something good come from the day, and finished up the cheesecake, as I mentioned earlier. After grabbing our sacks and checking out, we headed down to the train station for the train back to Glasgow.











At least I had one thing to be really excited about, and that was my purchase while shopping last night…


Yeeessss! I love Vivienne! I refused to wear it though, until I was at home, clean and showered and ready to look presentable.

After arriving in Glasgow and following some lady wandering through traffic to get to the bus, we bussed it back to where we’d come from only one week earlier. After getting snarked at by the staff there, we boarded the plane and discovered we’d lucked out and were seated in a three-row, just the two of us. We were also sandwiched in between the washrooms – handy, except for the fact that people are constantly in and out and it’s really gross when they come our and leave the door open. The food remained crappy though, and in some ways it was worse than when we arrived.


This is (allegedly) a submarine sandwich. This picture still makes me laugh. We both felt sorry for the people who had to give this out – how embarrassing.

The flight was long (again), but this time I didn’t sleep. I watched Harry Potter and then Pirates 3. By the end, I was ready to throw in the towel.



We arrived safe and sound, and with no trip in sight, I can safely unpack my bags, this time for a while.

Read more...