New Phone Number

If anyone needs to call, our Phone number is now:

(647) 298-9418

We're over here!

Curses!...I just spent an hour typing up an update, only to have it get gobbled up by a session timeout!

Ah well, It'll have to be cliff notes instead sorry!

Ok, important stuff and apologies first!

1)

Welcome to Dylan Tam! .. Bel (an ex-workmate of mine) and husband ET have spawned...here is a picture of the cute little fella!

We hope all is going well with the young fella, and me and Caren both wish you teh best! and can't wait to meet him in person!

2)

to Shaun F (who hosts this site for us!....check out his Blog Raarky's Blog) ).

If I knew how to make it a link on the side-bar I would, lol...however I am newb.

Ok,

So, what've we been up to?...well..

We now live in a 3rd floor apartment in a suburb called Davenport/Ossington, which is , geographically and socio-economically similar to Mt Wellington / Panmure ... a bit run down, but not too far from town.

Takes us about 25 mins to get to the center of town , which is one bus and 2 trains, however it's much easier than it sounds, as every bus and every train comes every 5 mins, and the whole trip costs $2.

As Caren has said below, we now have net access, which is good, as it allows us to search for and apply for jobs..

It's nice and cheap to (compared to NZ), we have a 3MBit connection with no data limits, and it costs $25 a month, including the cable modem and installation.

So anyways, what have we been up to?

Well, during the week we've been keeping our heads down, applying for jobs and not-spending-money , but we invariably get bored and have to do stuff in the weekends..

Last Friday , we went to an eastern suburb to check out a large Greek Food festival, called "taste of the Danforth".

The Danforth is a large street that runs down Greek town, and is well known for it's restaurants...basically for 3 days, they close down the whole street to traffic, and all the restaurants (of which there are hundreds surely!) put up marquess out the front on the street and offer up cheap "tastes" of their greek fair!

We had a good time wandering up and down. The street is about the size of Ponsonby, and was JAMMED with thousands of people.

The food was cheap (yay) and yummy (bonus!) , so that was time well spent (we got to go out , and eat for very little..mission accomplished!)

Saturday we headed into town to check out a movie (the Bourne Supremacy...6.5/10) , and we had some nice fusion thai/chinese next to a strip bar.

Sunday night, we splashed out, and we got to go to our first Proffesional Fotball game! (YAY!)

We got tickets to the Toronto Argonaughts Vs Edmonton Eskimos at the Toronto skydome :

We both really enjoyed it (even though Caren is still a bit unsure of the rules exactly ;))

CFL (Canadian Football League) is actually a lot more popoular than I would have thought..

The Canadians really have their own seperate sports identity to the US (much like NZ and Aus)....Canadians are really proud of Canada, and are a bit embarrased about beeing so close to the US I think ;)

Anyways, the football was of a very high level, and we enjoyed it...had good seats, and the atmosphere was very cool..certainly the biggest sport event I've been to (if you don’t count the televised Flames game at the Saddledome in Calgary).

Was interesting that CFL rules are different to US Football rules, the biggest difference beeing that there are only 3 Downs instead of 4 like in NFL.

This tends to promote a more pass oriented game, as teams are constantly in long yardage situations, and also causes a lot more turnovers than you see in the NFL.

I'm not sure if I prefer 3 down football to 4, as I think it takes away some of the tactical element, but it certainly made for high Action football!

The remainder of our baggage, and our PC's are getting shipped from Calgary today, so hopefully we'll have 'em by the weekend..

This'll mean me and Caren won't have to share a PC anymore (believe me, its harder than you think ;)) , and we'll both be able to work on personal projects to pass the time between job interviews etc..

anyways, thats about it..my fingers are tired after typing this in twice, so I shall sign off!

We Have Internet

Hi there,

yes we finally got internet and basic cable a few days ago - so we can communicate with the world (well sort of - we still have no phone that we can call internationally).

Things are fairly much the same here as in Calgary - just looking for work and blobbing out to conserve money. We had an unfortunate incident when we moved into an apartment which I decided I couldn't cope with - so we moved again the next day. The problem is, the landlord still has two months rent of ours. So we will have to wrangle that out of her somehow.

The first week was good - we were located right in town and could have a good look around everything while looking for accommodation. The city is very walkable and public transport is fairly good. You don't need timetables unless you are travelling in the middle of the night. You just walk down the road and catch a bus in five minutes, then catch two subways into town. It really isn't as horrific as it would sound if it was in Auckland. It is really only a half an hour trip from our apartment. We are also getting used to shopping and walking. So far, it is not too bad as the weather on the whole is very sunny and warm (around 28 to 30 degrees and humid).

One thing we did do that was new last week was go to an Ethiopian Restaurant. David and Margaret - you will love it. Basically the food consists of dishes of unleavened type bread/pancakes, break them up with your hands, and scoop up varieties of vegetarian and meat stews and curries with the broken bread. There are no knives and forks here and is a great place to socialise. And the food is also really yummy!! Mum, maybe you can find some culinary inclined Ethiopian people to open a restaurant in Auckland.

This weekend just been was the last weekend of Caribana.

This is a week long event for those coming from the Caribbean communities. This year was particularly good for the crowds, as last year SARS halved attendance. We went to the free thing of course - which was the parade. It runs from 10am to 6pm with a reason - the whole parade is VERY slow. Each truck will stop about 5m down the road for 15 minutes with loads of fabulous music. I think I have got to say that I enjoyed this more than Stampede parade coz the vibe was a lot more energized.

Lunch was at the hot and spicy food festival at the Harbourfront. Craig and I both had jerk chicken - a Jamaican BBQ with the meat basted in heaps of different spices. Mine wasn't as hot as I thought it could be - Craig on the other hand had to go one step further and add the extra hot spicy chilli oil to his dish. Very punishing!