While many people advocate going to school and getting an education, the reality is that education costs are more expensive than most people realize. Canada thankfully provides reasonably priced educations compared to the rest of the world, but it is far from free. Given that I grew up in Chilliwack, and that I had to move out to Vancouver to attend UBC, I spent approximately $11,000 per 8-month period, which included housing on the UBC campus along with a university food program (which tasted fairly similar to prison food, I imagine). Of those costs, approximately $3,000 went towards tuition, ...

I'm down to 12 days until I leave to Thailand, and it's definitely fast approaching. My friends Scott and Samantha leave tomorrow, so I'll get to starting watching their Facebook stream in the next few days to see my first glimpses of Thailand. I spent the last few days camping up at Cultus Lake, which is one of my favourite summer activities. It was pretty much perfect weather, other than being a tad cold at night, and was really enjoyable and relaxing. I have all my camping gear in my car right now, and am going to start getting it ready this afternoon to put back into storage for probably ...

Tonight is my last night in Chilliwack. It's been nearly two full years since I packed up my apartment in Vancouver and moved my entire life back to the small town I grew up. At the time, I was in desperate need of a break from city life, and welcomed the thought of having some family around as well as a slower pace of life. Since then I've spent the last two years working from my apartment here in Chilliwack, visiting old friends, having dinner with family, and doing a little bit of soul searching. Not long after I arrived back in Chilliwack my family started commenting to me about how much ...

I haven't blogged about my upcoming trip in a while, so I thought I'd do a quick update. I have one room officially boxed up, and the living room is mostly packed as well. The next big chore is to go through all my old clothes and get rid of anything I no longer wear. After that, I can box up what's left of the bedroom, and then start working on the kitchen. Truthfully, it probably wouldn't take me too much longer to get the rest all boxed up, but at this point if I go too much further it's not going to be very exciting living in my apartment anymore. I sold my TV a while ago to someone who was ...

I've been thinking lately about starting to go to Yoga. I really know nothing about it, other than people go and bend in various directions for an hour or so at a time. I had a few friends in Vancouver who went religiously, guys too, and they always seemed pretty pumped about going. I've been trying to come up with more things to do when I'm not working, and things that involve exercise or being healthy are at the top of the list these days. The gym is great and all, but treadmills and dumbbells get a bit boring after a while. I'm also hoping I can meet a few more people in the class and get to ...

As I get older and a bit wiser, I'm starting to see the wisdom in not always buying the cheapest items. That's never been a problem when it comes to technology, as I'm attracted to shiny objects. But when it comes to items like food, it's a bit more challenging to spend an extra dollar or two on a dozen eggs, or to buy hormone free ground beef. Lately I've been making purchases that I wouldn't have made in the past, mostly people I've been trying to go out of my way to help smaller businesses. One such transaction I made before Christmas was to go to a local tire shop and buy a set of tires from ...

It won't be much longer now until things start heating up around here. It seems like just a few days ago that Christmas was here (or possibly it only seems that way because my tree is still up). I for one am getting pretty excited about enjoying the sun again when it comes. This summer I'm hoping to do quite a bit of camping and hiking. The campground reservation system for the lower mainland isn't open yet, but I found out that the one in Tofino actually opened the other day. So I decided to whip out my credit card and book three days of camping on the Island in July. I'm going to probably take ...

I woke up yesterday to another sunny day here in CowTown™. I was debating going to the gym, but decided instead to go and try a local hike. So I pulled my hiking boots out of a box, found some clean socks, and drove up to the trailhead for Teapot Hill, which is only about 10 minutes from my house. Teapot hill isn't that hard of a hike, but considering I haven't been hiking really in years, it did a good job of wearing me out. The elevation gain is only around 300 meters, but a lot of that comes near the end. At the top of the hike is a pretty nice view of Cultus Lake, so I snapped a few photos ...

So, this is actually a timely story, given my recent efforts to purchase more local food. The British Columbia Centre for Disease Control has recently shut down a local Chilliwack company that produces raw (i.e. unpasteurized) milk due to contamination with faecal matter. I won't argue whether or not that faecal matter is of concern, since I don't know the levels that were found or how they relate. The owner of the business is obviously upset with the government interference: But Home on the Range owner Alice Jongerden said the health agency has never contacted them with concerns, or gave them ...

I have to say, I've always been in that camp where cheaper was generally better, at least when it came to retail items. Part of that was because usually my knowledge of what I was buying was greater than that of the 17 year old kid trying to sell the product for me. So in that case, might as well get the item as cheap as possible. Chilliwack has definitely undergone a fairly big transition in the last ten years, moving from small, family run businesses to mostly large franchise stores. A few years ago one of the only places to buy electronics in town was a store called John's Electronics, which ...

Well, I made it back home late last night. Thankfully, the border agents didn't grill me as hard as they normally do, otherwise I probably would have started with the smart ass responses. I gotta say, WordCamp Portland was a really amazing event, so major kudos to everyone involved in pulling it off. In fact, with each WordCamp I attend, I think that bar is getting progressively pushed higher and higher. For example, prior to my talk someone came and fitted me with a wireless microphone in addition to a normal microphone, the former being for the live stream. In addition, they exported all my ...

Yes, I realize Christmas is still a long time away. But truthfully, it'll be here in no time. This will be my first Christmas a resident of Chilliwack since I was 18, and I think it'll be pretty cool. The tree in my photo is my little Christmas tree from Vancouver. I've had him up a few years now, and he always makes me happy. Truthfully, I kept him up until almost July last year, simply because I didn't have the heart to take it down. I mean, I'd come home from work, and there'd he'd be, all lit up and happy. How could I take him down? I know, I'm strange. I get it. This year I'll take him down ...

Strangely enough, my home town, and the town I'm currently living in, has a reputation for smelling pretty bad. Truthfully, it's a farming community, so that smell is usually just manure or other organic matter than ultimately yields everyone's favourite Chilliwack corn or other farming goodness. I'd be the first to admit that as a kid that smell used to gross me out occasionally. But really, you only can smell it in the summer, and only pretty much in the heart of the growing season. Most of the time in the winter all you smell is that crisp, clean air that comes as a result of being surrounded ...

I'll admit, keeping up with birthdays on my blog is pretty hard to do. I have a hard enough time remembering dates and making phone calls when they roll around, something I'm thankful my sister helps me out with. That being said, I missed blogging about one on Sunday, probably because I was so exhausted from Blogathon. It was my dad's birthday this last Sunday, and I just wanted to wish him a happy belated birthday from my website here. I managed to remember to call him on Sunday, but somehow this blog entry got missed (sorry bud). Hopefully we can get together for a quick drink sometime in the ...

Since I wrote in detail about Vancouver in my last post, it's only fitting that I talk a little bit about my current place of residence, Chilliwack. Chilliwack is a little farming community nestled between a mountain range, approximately 100 kms east of Vancouver. My apartment is probably only about 5 minutes from one of the nicest provincial parks in the province, complete with it's own picturesque lake: I currently rent a 1200 square foot apartment for about $100 less a month than I was paying in Vancouver for my 700 square foot apartment. A new grocery store opened about two blocks away from ...

Vancouver is without a doubt one of the prettiest cities in the world, something that I appreciate more and more every time I go on a trip. In fact, I was just mentioning to a friend yesterday just how clean and inviting Vancouver is compared to most cities, specifically San Francisco and Los Angeles (both of which seem grubby and dirty by comparison, even though I happen to like aspects of both). And while Vancouver is a pretty city, it is not without its problems. In fact, Vancouver's lower-east side is one of the poorest neighbourhoods in all of Canada, which is ironic given that it's about ...

Tonight some of my old friends came for a visit, and we went down to the little park near where we grew up to take a few family photos. Unfortunately the weather wasn't really cooperating, and we got rained on a little bit. One of the biggest challenges for taking family photos is working with children. Children are obviously full of energy, and taking photos isn't always something they like to do, especially when there are swing sets and ducks waddling around. Thankfully Kaede was happy to accommodate a few photos in between duck feeding sessions. Since Kaede is about to be a big sister, we ...

Well, yesterday was a pretty warm day here in Chilliwack. I think it officially got up to 31 degrees Celsius. My little weather widget says it might rain a bit today, but here's hoping it's wrong. I'm hopefully going to go up to the lake for a few hours with some friends. Other than these last few days, this seems to be a pretty poor summer so far in terms of weather. What does everyone else think? I've also emailed the TweetMe guys about my widget on the right - for some reason it doesn't work on this domain properly. It works on my test domains, but not here. I suspect because I had this site ...

Some days I wake up and still find it a bit weird that I'm back in my home town. I'm totally enjoying myself here, more so with each passing month, but certain aspects of being here are still strange to me. High school literally feels like yesterday to me, probably because I spent so much of my 20s in school, but when I think back to high school here, I have a hard time putting all the pieces together. For example, I went by my old house I lived in when I was 17. Strangely enough, I couldn't remember how I got to school in the mornings. I'm pretty sure I walked to school, and I'm pretty sure I ...

I haven't slept that much lately. In San Francisco the sun would rise around 6am and wake me up. Normally I'd be ok simply falling back asleep, but that just hasn't been working lately. Surprisingly though, I haven't been tired. If anything, I've found myself a lot more energetic than usual. For example, this morning I woke up at 7am and decided to go to the gym. It was a bit tough, given that I hadn't had any real food yet, but I felt pretty awesome when it was over, especially considering I started my work day at my usual time and had already got some exercise in. I think I'm going to try making ...