Tag: Chilliwack Posts

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 slides to JPG/PDF such that the people watching on the internet could go through my slides while I was talking. Apparently the live stream was nearly flawless as well, which is great. One thing that still bothers me about conferences in general though is sort […]

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 in January, I promise. But it’ll be cool to have a tree up next to the fireplace in my apartment. I’m even looking forward to putting a few presents […]

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 by snow-capped mountains. As an adult though, I find that I actually don’t mind the smell at all. Maybe it’s all the years I spent in Vancouver smelling the urine-filled alleys and stairwells, or maybe I’m just conscious of the fact that […]

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 near future.

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 me, so I can literally walk to the grocery store and back in about 15 or 20 minutes. I’m also about a six minute walk from one of the nicest gyms in the city as well, so I’ve been slowly trying to work myself back into […]

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 5 minutes away from one of Vancouver’s richest. There is also a great deal of controversy in the city with how the homeless are being treated with the upcoming 2010 Olympics looming in the distance. After living in Vancouver for the better part […]

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 also took a few fun shots of Kaede and the baby. This is the first time I’ve done family photos in a very long time, probably close six months, so it was refreshing to get outside again and shake some of the dust of […]

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 locked down for a while this domain ended up getting blacklisted.

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 met my friend Landy on the way, but I really couldn’t say what route we took or where we met in the mornings. It’s hard to believe that it’s been about […]

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 that my standard routine, at least for the next little while. I also went out this evening and whacked a few tennis balls around. I used to actually be on the tennis team back in […]