Category Archives: Travel

Au Revoir, Vangroover

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ma thuggie, yo. straight up awesome

ma thuggie, yo. straight up awesome. o g

So there I was with money in my pocket (or my backpack, or my bag, or maybe in my other pants, my debit card…somewhere; but there it was) for once.

There=Downtown Vancouver.

I’d gone downtown after two months of house-sitting in the leafy, unconfined confines of South Hill. It sure is peaceful there; the rowdiest the neighborhood got was when there was a dispute about a cricket game in the park out back. The biggest problem I experienced was deciding if the cat was rubbing up against me because she wanted food, or because she wanted me to clean the litterbox. I basically did nothing except cook (I ate the pasta puttanesca from this cookbook every meal for four days running, it was that good) develop a crush on Bobby Flay by watching Food Network 24/7, and hardly changed out of my Thuggie the whole time except to (very occasionally) shower.

Glamorous, it was not.

So, on payday I wander downtown to pick up my mail and get there a mere ten minutes after the main post office has closed, which is one-half hour earlier than ANY OTHER GODDAM POST OFFICE in the world, so. Fuck.

Now what do I do? Without my MooCards. Without my new Wikileaks tee shirt. Without my bills.

Oh. I guess I’ll find a way to go on.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a glam-deprived blogger in possession of a decent paycheque must be in want of a Chanel makeover, so that is what I got, along with a LARGE bottle of Chanel 19 for which I have been pining for years, and my very first truly grown up red lipstick. Yes, extravagant, but I hadn’t been paid in close to three months, so it qualifies as a necessary act of Salvation Armani. As I said to the makeup artist, if you can’t find a good red lipstick that suits you at Chanel, where can you? And good luck trying to find, let alone deal with, the bio-contaminated, sticky testers at the drug store.

But I still had some money left, so obviously I had to go, like the guy in the nursery rhyme, to Market. To Market. Where I ran into my friend Hez and the cadre of Hezbians who run the bar there. Jay Jones, bar superstar and officially Canada’s Best Bartender, bought us a round, which is something that happens all the time to people who have money and not frequently enough to those who do not. Spot prawn sashimi, three cocktails, and a small pizza took care of some more of the extra weight in my wallet, and then I staggered back to the DTES to catch the 12:30am bus to Casa Metro.

My pal Hummingbird604 came down to the bus station to hang out at McDonalds with me and see me off, and it’s a good thing he did, even though his first remark was, “What happened? You look like a girl!” I explained about the makeover and made the now-obligatory bus joke about being eaten by a mentally ill cannibal somewhere in Northern Manitoba, and obviously that angered the gods, for they had a surprise for me.

In the lineup an obviously mentally ill man took a liking…no, a loving…to me and decided I was the most glamorous creature he had ever seen.He would not leave my side, although it meant cutting off 30 people in the line. He would not stop standing too close, staring too hard, asking sincerely if I were a celebrity and coming thisclose to asking me to run away to Toronto with him.

Must have been the lipstick.

In any case, I was pretty sure it was going to be difficult to shake this new Klingon, so we subtly conspired to let him get ahead of me in line. That way he’d choose a seat and I’d choose another one, instead of me choosing one and him plopping down beside me, as he’d apparently decided the gods had decreed must happen.

Enter the bus driver.

I hadn’t particularly noticed him, but he did notice what was going on, and while he did his best to discourage this poor, rootless fellow about taking the bus all the way to Toronto (even though he got a ticket for less than $200 somehow) without any luggage or anywhere to go there, he eventually had to let him on. Then he turned to me and said, “Ma’am, can I ask you to do me a favour?”

“Sure,” I replied, thinking (with inner groanage of a severe nature) maybe it was to keep an eye on the guy so he didn’t wander off at some podunk gas station and get eaten by coyotes or something.

“Can you sit in the front seat? I like to pick and choose who I put there.”

Can I? Could I? You BET I could. Sure, it was a night run, and sure, the reading lights don’t work in the front seat, but just as surely I’d managed to pack my books all in the luggage that I’d checked, and not in my backpack, so it was all good; I wasn’t missing anything. I spent a Klingon-less five hours looking out the panoramic windows and looking forward to soaking out the road stress in the infamous hot tub, which I had put on Foursquare when I was up here in January.

And what’s new with you lately?

The view from Ruralopolis

The view from Ruralopolis. The ACTUAL view.

Should I register “rollercoaster” as well?

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well what the fuck WAS that?

well what the fuck WAS that?

Ever had one of those days that starts out like that and then goes…well…like this?

That’s right, bitches.

Problems! Solved!

mostly.

Problem 1) Transportation to Vancouver so I can honour my commitments to speak at and participate in Social Media Week and Social Media for Government in Victoria.

Solution 1) Hotel_Goddess, a woman who has never met me, who lives in another city from me, and who doesn’t even know my real name, promptly put her airmiles together and made a reservation for me. Now this is a religion that pays off: I am a convert! From now on, I’ll stop worshipping Cthluhu and start worshipping Hotel_Goddess, because what the hell has worshipping Cthulhu ever got me? I’ve yet to be eaten first or, really, at all recently, but there…I’ve said too much.

Problem 2) Homelessness which I think we can all agree is a helluva problem, particularly with it frosting over every night already (yes, really). Solved in bipartite mode by my friend Nancy until Monday, stowing me away in her mother’s basement (maybe Mom won’t notice? I dunno, she’s pretty sharp!) and by friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend-of-a-chef-running-a-pullled-pork-truck-in-Osoyoos(and if you see him say hi from me) to whom I was introduced by email and who has a cabin which isn’t currently occupied and whose current house-sitter has other things to keep him busy for the next few weeks and maybe forever. So this cabin needs someone sitting in it, and it might as well be me. So, from Monday I am going to be sitting in a rustic two bedroom cabin/trailer/Rube Goldberg agglomeration with a view, a deck, a wood stove for heat, a gas stove for cooking, a big screen tv, and in a very funky, desirable neighborhood that’s walking distance to downtown. Like, four blocks. If the next couple of weeks work out, I might get to stay there when the owner goes up north to cater at a college, which would mean I pay for utilities and taxes and such, but no rent.

u totes jelly bro

u totes jelly bro

Oh yes, did I mention two bedrooms? One for me and one for Julian, until I coax him into getting over his crippling shyness.

Problem 3) Vancouver rent doubled from $340 to $760 or thereabouts.

Solution 3) Emailed the woman in charge of admin at Kellett and had her fax my ROE to the co-op. Did this before the last post went up, by the way. Doing it afterwards may have been less productive, knowmasayin’? Photographed my last pay stub detailing last day paid and how much I earned in all of August ($288 for the curious) and sent the digital files to the co-op. Was almost punchy enough to hit Flickr Uploader by rote, but managed to stop myself in time. It ain’t art. Then I forwarded to them the receipt from Paypal for my blogging payment for the posts I made in July. $300 US equating, after Paypal fees and the exchange rate, to about $288, sound familiar?

Co-op re-evaluated my housing charges in record time, thank GOD, and now I have to pay only the $340.

Problem 4) Unemployment=No Money. And no, I’m not eligible for BC welfare or, it seems, welfare up here either. Yay, mobility! Anyhoodle, even when one saves $400 on rent and gets another place for free, one cannot eat air. And one cannot purchase non-air foodstuffs up here for anything like spare change. A week’s groceries from Sunrise Market would cost me $12; the equivalent here (if I could even GET the equivalent here) is more like $45.

Solution 4) A very nice person on Twitter who wishes to remain anonymous because it’s a business account and they don’t want it to seem like they’re looking for publicity ALTHOUGH THEY TOTALLY DESERVE IT FOR THIS AND YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE sent me $250 via Paypal. This is, as with Hotel_Goddess, someone who’s never met me in person and doesn’t even know my real name. They just like the way I roll, have benefited from social media in the past, and want to pay it forward. And another friend who’s starting her own blog sent me $200 for a blogging lesson, so I can at least pay my Vancouver rent if I put the two of those together. Might even get some gruel!

If I can manage to switch my flight to the 13th instead of the 9th, I might even be able to run a workshop here at the Aurora Conference Centre. I’ve been talking with Chef Pierre and a workshop series is very doable, but I’ve missed the deadline to get an ad in to the paper in time to have a workshop before the 9th, so I have to check out the flight change tomorrow. A full workshop would mean I could pay all my arrears to the co-op and then some, and be sure of having enough money to get back up here and do another workshop. And so on. Gotta get that flight switched (might be another $100 or so) and then pick a date!

Oh, and I’m going to be speaking briefly at the Rotary North meeting this coming Thursday at the Top Knight, so if you want to meet the now-happy wanderer in person, turn up. But don’t get between me and the mic; I wouldn’t want anyone to get hurt.

Moral of the story: When in trouble, whine. Copiously. On every social media platform available to you.

C'mon, get HAPPY!

C'mon, get HAPPY!

Welcome to Yellowknife

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and believe me, I NEED that Flak Jacket lately

and believe me, I NEED that Flak Jacket lately

Keep your shoes on. You’ll see why.

In Vancouver, when we go into someone’s house, we generally take our shoes off; it’s something we probably picked up from Asia, and for those of us who don’t enjoy vacuuming, which is all right-thinking people if you axe me, it makes a great deal of sense.

Not in Yellowknife.

Judging completely by my own experience, for I cannot judge by anyone else’s, not being anyone else (except for icecoaster) and thus not having had their experiences, I would say not only don’t take your shoes off, but you might want to keep that jacket handy as well, and not just because it’s getting chilly lately.

In case you’re unfamiliar with the history of my Great Yellowknife Adventure, here is some background which should fill you in, right up to the present moment. You may want to keep a sick bag handy as well; I don’t make up the facts, I just report them.

So…in Vancouver I live in a co-op, which is both extremely well-situated and extremely affordable, my earnings since I got sick last fall being of the minimal variety, and co-op rates being tied to income. When people ask why my earnings have been minimal, I explain that being self-employed and having to take several months off for health reasons, then, while recovering, jumping back into a market where social media trainers outnumber social media students by a ratio of about two to one is precisely what I believe Forbes defines as your basic “challenging business environment.” So, earnings being minimal, and Vancouver being somewhat less enchanting of late for various and sundry (although, alas, not tawdry; that would be more entertaining) reasons, I cast my eye abroad. Or along. Or above.

And ended up in Yellowknife. My friend Nancy, whom I met on Twitter, sent me a message that Kellett Communications was looking for a digital project manager. We chatted via Skype, they checked me out on LinkedIn, and after a few back and forths they came back and said they’d hired someone with more direct project management experience, but would I be interested in coming up and learning it while they built up the social media side? Well, given the chance to start basically the first social media agency in the NWT, I said Yes! Well duh, of COURSE I did. There’s nothing someone who’s good at something hates so much as not doing that thing, and god knows, I wasn’t doing it in Vancouver, but Yellowknife was like stepping back to, say 2002 in Vancouver in terms of social media: everything was just about to start happening. An awesome opportunity, and while I was up there, I could get involved with a nonprofit or even start my own, bringing the power of the digital revolution to remote communities just as I had to the homeless and the marginalized on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

I got a start date (which I managed to miss by a day: my own damn fault for not allowing enough time at the airport, yes, even at 5am) and a sublet; the sublet was amazingly handy. Four blocks from work, fully furnished, and (for Yellowknife) a good price. I should explain something: a good price for Yellowknife is approximately what a Yaletown condo would cost. This is not a place that one could describe as “reasonable” by any means. Or on any level: read on.

The sublet was courtesy of a commenter on Crasstalk, and she’d be gone from June through to the start of October, which was perfect, as I’d know by mid-September whether or not the job would be a go; after you’ve been self-employed since the last century, going back to working for someone else is a big adjustment, and so it proved. Over and over and over again, but more of that anon…

All was going swimmingly for a couple-three weeks, or as swimmingly as anything can go when it involves me waking up before the crack of noon, when I got an email from the woman from whom I was subletting: things weren’t working out down South, she was coming back. Hokay then: we briefly considered her subletting my co-op in Vancouver but:

  1. I’d left it in No Sublettable Condition, having recently taken delivery of a bunch of extra furniture I was supposed to sell (guess what I didn’t have time to put on Craigslist before I left?) and me being at the best of times no great housekeeper; when you add being seriously ill for a period of months and then in recovery from surgery, you have one epic hell of a messy apartment.
  2. My housing agreement (indeed, ALL co-op housing agreements) specifically outlaw subletting, to discourage profiteering.

So. Back she was coming and what was I going to do about it? Well, as it happens I stayed on the futon in her living room till, with Nancy‘s help, I found a shared house with a sympatico-seeming hippie type at a wicked good price for Yellowknife, and arranged to move in August 1. When we parted I said, “So, unless I hear something from you that everything’s gone sideways,” for lo, I am way cautious, verily dudes. For that carpet has been pulled out from my feet already here in YZF, as you can conclude from the above and if you can’t, take some smart pills and read it again, but where was I? Oh yes, “we’re on for the first of August, right?” She nodded and said, “right,” and we were in business.

Cut to August 1.

There I am, trundling up the walkway to the door. There Nancy is, leaning against her mother’s car, ready to help me with my things. And there the hippie is, walking out the door towards me with a shit-eating grin on her face…take it away, icecoaster:

Who YOU calling a tramp, buddy?

Who YOU calling a tramp, buddy?

Oh, guess what. Sorry I didn’t get back to you. I’ve been offline. Camping, actually. So you couldn’t have gotten in touch with me but, anyway, when I didn’t hear from you I just, you know, sort of figured I’d just go ahead and change my mind. Sorryyyyyy. So, yeah.

So.

It’s a good thing I’ve been scouting out charities to volunteer for, because at least I am well-informed about homeless shelter options in Yellowknife.

Cut to August 2.

There I am, beavering away (does not mean what you think it means; you have a dirty mind. That’s why I like you) at Kellett, doggedly learning that Project Management isn’t my favorite thing in the world but oh well, it must be done. And there I am, doing it. Right there on the lunch table. Because I don’t really have a desk, but that’s another story; well, I have a desk, but it’s in the boardroom, which is down the stairs, down the sidewalk a couple of doors, up some other stairs, and down the hall, but that’s neither here nor there, not either desk which I have.

Make that had a desk.

I get an email from the boss: could I come and see him for about 15 minutes? Sure, of course I can; I may be newish to this “employment” thing, but if there’s one thing I know it’s when the boss says, “could you” you say YES. So I said Yes and was even on time when I got there and when I got there he laid me off.

“Not enough social media work, sorry.”

Imagine my joy.

And then he clarified that, no, he wouldn’t be getting me a ticket back to Vancouver.

Being efficient-like, I went back and packed up my lunch supplies and papers and such (although dammit, I did forget that fresh new case of mini-yogurts in the fridge, and when you’re homeless anything you don’t have to heat up is bonus points) and went back to the place I was couch-surfing until I found a house-sit, and emailed the co-op, figuring, not unreasonably, that they would revise their estimation of the housing charges.

No such luck: because I was employed on August 1 (the holiday) I had to pay over $700 for the Vancouver place. Which wouldn’t be so bad if I hadn’t also had to pay $1400 for the Yellowknife place in July. Between the two of them, my housing charges for the four weeks I was employed exceeded my net pay by a significant amount. And that’s why I can’t just buy my own ticket back to Vancouver.

Today I got an email that because they don’t yet have the ROE from Kellett proving that I was laid off, my housing charges for September are also over $700.

Ah, but there’s more, if you’re still with me. And if you’re not with me, you’re agin me, as old people with single tooths in their heads are wont to say. Why would anyone wont to say that, though? I ask yez.

So. Thanks again to Nancy, I got a really good house-sitting gig for most of August: handy to stores, three stories, jacuzzi, cushy sofa, big tv, lynxes walking down the driveway. Sweet. After that gig ended, the deal was, I stay with Nancy a few days, house-sitting while she was down South, and then on September 1 I crash on my friend’s futon; this was the place I’d originally sublet. She felt bad enough for me to let me crash there for a few weeks until I fly back to Vancouver on the 18th for Social Media Week.

Cut to today.

I open my email and there, in #000000 and #FFFFFF, it is: the email that says Sorry, you can’t stay here.

Indeed. Apparently I cannot.

But wait, I just thought of something...Teepee for me

But wait, I just thought of something...Teepee for me

Guess what just happened!

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Neither Maria nor I are impressed at this point

Neither Maria nor I are impressed at this point

Again.

Seriously, people. Anybody got a cardboard box I can borrow for a couple of weeks?

Sunrise over Condorizon, Yellowknife

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Vodpod videos no longer available.

This was two house-sits ago, out in what I called Buttfuck Nowhere, which it is if you don’t have a car, and I don’t. Also known as New Newfoundland, for the influx of Newfies: such an influx that the local grocery store carries big white plastic pails of “beef navels”. Those are actual beef navels, not some kind of seagoing bovine, because it’s a popular food in Newfoundland, or so I surmise from the fact that the bucket has a map of such on the label. I found a recipe for beef navel pastrami, but otherwise I’m not sure what you do with them.

While I was out there, housesitting at a far too nice place on a perfectly ordinary road surrounded by condos, Walmarts, and Tim Hortonses in all directions, I decided to take the garbage out. In the middle of the night. Well, normally who cares, right? Only on my way back from the dumpster I saw something move under a car, something doggish-size, and being from Vancouver and used to raccoon and skunks and coyotes and such, I just made growling “giddoudahear” kind of noises and something shot off into the brush.

A lynx.

I knew a woman from William’s Lake who used to go out hunting grizzly bears in the woods, just her and her two bear dogs (the kind they tell the white people are extinct, but aren’t). The only thing in the wilderness that scared her was the lynx: apparently they’re just as crazy and aggressive as wolverines, and will attack pretty much anything.

So yeah. Even taking out the garbage can be a bit of an adventure up here.