Chronicles of a Staunton away from Home

Well, well, well it’s been a very long time. 6 months pretty much. I don’t even have any photos to excuse myself. How can I summarise the last 6 months, huh? I got B, B+ and an A+ this semester and I’ve reached 60 credits: a waypoint for sure. I reached a quarter century with as little dignity as I could dispose of and I lost two friends and one great friend. Three of my room-mates had to move, Felix left for good after finishing his research (to Germany), Jay completed his degree and left for Korea and Drew, my running buddy was forced to move out for complete bullshit reasons.

On the good side, I’m working now for a guy in Granville Island. It’s pays reasonably well by Canadian standards but can be pretty random for pay cheques (Yes, that is how you spell it, not `checks`! you damn fools!!!)

Me and Miyuki are still hanging in there and doing quite well. We had a quiet Christmas, cooked a turkey and generally just relaxed and watched TV. She now has a phone which really makes a difference: I can now make contact with Miyuki at any time and know that she’s OK.

There is a mountain of other things that have happened over the last 6 months but 7 beers make me forget whats worth posting.

I wish all those able to read, and those not a merry Christmas and a happy new year.

Good Night. And go home.

It’s been a long time since my last post but there is good reason. I’ve just come back from an excellent road trip holiday with Miyuki. We covered nealy 1400 miles in 4 days and saw some awesome sights and had some really good fun.

Day 1. Vancouver to Revelstoke. 360 Miles.
A relatively tame drive, but a long one at nearly 8 hours. Me and Miyuki have done most of this bit before. A night in Revelstoke was nicer than I thought it would be. A small but vibrant town with small shops and cosy restaurants.

Day 2. Revelstoke to Banff via Lake Louise. 180 Miles.

Another nice drive though Glacier National Park and over Rogers Pass. Arriving in Banff about 4 hours later. A very busy tourist route and finally we get off Highway 1. Instead of taking the highway from Lake Louise to Banff we opted for the Bow Valley Parkway - longer but definitely worth it. We spent a night in Banff but it rained pretty hard. Banff is full of tourists but is still a good place to launch from. We even managed to get to Lake Minniwanka - a very beautiful lake given it’s name!

Day 3. Banff to Jasper via the Icefields Parkway and onto Valemount. 350 Miles.

The Icefields Parkway is absolutely awesome and I would love to do it later in the year when the glaciers are bigger. The cruise control was a must it’s just a shame you still have to hold the wheel. We got to Jasper at about 8 (I think) but could not get a hotel room and we were forced to drive another 100 or so miles late at night over the Yellowhead pass to Valemount, BC for accomodation. We did get a free dinner from a Chinese restaurant. Miyuki found a woodlice in her rice, rightly went nuts and walked out. I promptly informed the waitress who told me she would get Miyuki some more rice!!! I refused to pay and 60ft down the street an angry Chinese chef came charging at me. Luckily Jasper is pretty well populated and not much else happened. We had a few drinks and arrived in Valemount at about 1:30 in the morning.

Day 4. Valemount to Vancouver. 450 Miles.

A long but very nice drive with what I think was the single most amazing view - Mt Robson. We stopped a few times, Clearwater, Kamloops and Merrit. Back into Vancouver early evening for a good old Keg steak with my girl. I love it.

I was a good trip and I hope to do some the same places again. Maybe try and get further north.

Over the last month, I’ve moved again, managed to get some contract work and finished my exams so it’s been busy and it ain’t over yet. I’ll try and post more often.

Check out the Photo Gallery for some more snaps of the holiday.

I’ve been quite busy lately and had Miyuki’s Birthday on the 20th and our One Year Anniversary on the 24th (hooray!). I’ve just finished my midterms and spent a little time taking some panaramic pics of the SFU campus.

They were surprisingly easy to do with HP’s panarama stitcher application. Also got some other pics of Miyuki’s birthday. Here we are at Canada Place next to one of the hundreds of silly bears! Thats me kicking one in the nuts John West style and finally a picture of the bus stop at SFU.

My Mum and Dad came over to visit me this month, along with family friends Pete and Pauline. They drove over to Calgary, up to Banff, on to Jasper, down to Kelowna and finally down to me in Vancouver. The weather was pretty bad for them but we all had lots of late nights chatting and telling stories - one of my favourite past times.

I also, finally, got to stay at One Wall Centre, something I have wanted to do for a long time. It was really good to see everyone with a chance to actually relax. It was all rushed when Rebecca came. I only have two classes this semester so it was much easier to get away with the parents.

The compulsory food/clothing shop was also fun - I wish I took a picture of the shirt my Dad bought. The amount of shopping done when I wasn’t there was also substantial with it being almost impossible to pack the Lincoln Towncar, a monster of a car.

Ah well, it might be a while before I see them again and a few tears were shed. Next up for me is Miyuki’s birthday on the 20th of June and then our 1 year anniversary on the 24th of June - should be good.

Well, it has been quite a while since my last post. Life has been quite busy recently. Here’s what happened….

In mid April my big sister, Bex, came over to see me and help me move all my stuff 200m up a hill. She also met my girlfriend, which was very cool. We had dinner at Guu but it wasn’t as good as usual. The beef was underdone and the Mackerel wasn’t salty enough and was a little overdone. It was good fun tho.

Miyuki then went home for two weeks, the day after my sis arrived. She generally enjoyed it but her parents are small town Japanese folk and she had a hard time to begin with. She’s back now so it don’t matter anyways.

Me and Bex drove over to Kelowna to see Chris and Linda for a day, take some pics of Pop’s apartment and relax a little. Linda’s dad put us up in his ’shed’!!! - but its a hell of a shed. The weather was fantastic and we really did have some fun bombing around in the car. We had two dinners at the Keg, the second visit was awesome.

The week shot by and we had to move all my shit up a hill to a new room. Hard work and a few surprises. Thankfully I didn’t get this room, but mine wasn’t that much better –>

A week went and she flew home on the Thursday, by Sunday however, I was in Manchester airport waiting for two hungover parents and Bex to pic me up. I jumped on a last minute flight out of YVR on the Saturday for a week at home.

I’m back into lectures now but did get a little work at OCS while at home and I also got news that I can apply for off-campus work now, busy busy busy

Well, well, well. It looks like I’ve been wiped off the face of the planet by Google. I went back to see where I was on the google search results and I couldn’t find this site anywhere. I’m not sure what has happened, I scoured the google discussions and the site is still in the google index, just none of the pages on the site - I might have been a little too aggressive with my metadata keyword use. So, I guess, I’ll have to submit a Google sitemap and get those over-educated egits to put my site back on.

Another topic I found hilarious was the opening up of the .eu domain. It appears that most of the registrants are German. Is it not enough that they take the towels before anyone else, now they’re taking our domains too. Arggh.

I have my MIS exam in 7 hours and I have to come up with a ‘joke’ or insightful comment for a bonus point at the end. hmmm, so many to choose from…..

Out….

Its been one year since me and Miyuki first went out. We went back to the same place near UBC, Some Kinda Pasta and sat in the same seats too. Miyuki even ordered the same food! I posted some pics of the morning after at Tim Hortons, my hair was a mess and I couldn’t keep my eyes open! stupid. We had lots of fun an didn’t talk about prostitution like we did the first time!!!!

We have both come a long way since that first date, we are both in SFU now, Miyuki lives in Lougheed, I at SFU…. so many things have changed, some for the better, some for the worse, but we are still here and that is a big deal to me.

We are both stressed out with exams coming up over the next two weeks, Miyuki more than me I think. I got lucky with my exam schedule and have them all at night and spread out a bit, Miyuki has them all right at the start of the first week.

I’m only signed up for two courses over the summer, Financial Accounting and one of the Macroeconomics. Maybe the summer will be slow, but I’m still looking forward to it. Miyuki is taking at least one of the Psychology courses, I think 210 but she hasn’t actually signed up yet.

Ok, I’m done……study.

I got part of my MIS grade today and was pleasantly surprised at how high it was, 96.3%. Thats 77/80, pretty effin good I think. Problem is that it is only a B!!!!! Thankfully its only worth a few percent of the final mark.

I’ve got finals coming up soon and they are all at night, 7pm to 10pm. Not looking forward to the statistics one mainly because the last midterm, which I don’t have the result for, was so hard to read and understand.

Other than that its pretty boring at the moment, still trying hard to get some on-campus work and deciding what to do for the summer semester. I want to get a Sun Admin certification or maybe Oracle 10G but it’s so expensive to do the instructor led classes.

Ah, mumble mumble mumble.

Only 20 days until I see my big sis and only a month or so until I see my parents again, tick tock tick tock.

Over….

Its been snowing like mad at SFU for the last few days, with lectures being cancelled on Wednesday. I was amazed at the difference between the SFU campus and Metrotown. Although SFU is on Burnaby mountain, you don’t really think it’s a mountain - but the difference in snow lets you know for sure. Metrotown isn’t that far away but there is almost no snow there, here there is like 6-8 inches of the stuff.

This is the morning after the first day, there is still two more days of the white stuff after this pic!!!

While I was taking the pics I also got a shot of the view from the SFU Highland Pub. I told my Mum and Dad about the view and told them that they must see it when they visit in May - the picture is a glimpse of why.

At night the view is even better with three major cities lighting up the sky, mountains in all directions, a huge river and the ocean - it’s absolutely awesome. I know for sure that my Dad will love it and I hope that Pete and Pauline will like it too.

Anyway, I’m still waiting on one midterm result and I have shedloads of work for monday, with another statistics assignment, research for OB and MIS to finish. Phhhh.

Well, I needn’t have worried about statistics - I came in with a respectable 78%. That’ll do just nicely thankyou.

I had another Midterm on Tuesday so only one more result to get. Two assignments for Friday tho. Arrghh!

Also, site is moving up the google rankings nicely, up to about 6th on a search for Thomas Staunton. My main competition comes from old Georgie Staunton, an orientalist apparently!

Miyuki got her sociology assignment back and was even more pissed than for her linguistics result. Again, I thought it was pretty good. OK, it wasn’t brilliant but unfortunately effort doesn’t get her a good grade - if it did she would be kicking ass.

Ah, back to the grindstone………..