sheff2van : sheffield -> vancouver

Well my career has not exactly taken off in Vancouver. I have been a stay at home woman for the past 6 months with the exception of a couple of temporary jobs in insurance agents and real estate offices. The most recent was with Dominion of Canada, General Insurance Company. It was mainly filing and a bit of reception work. So I'm not exactly fulfilled in my work life at present. However, we are in the process of setting up a new company called Blue Moon learning, which is very exciting. We will look at the company's present training and develop it into online learning where appropriate. The first contract we have is with a Mortgage Broker (our mortgage broker actually), who wants some post course basic training putting online, and who, by coincidence, is also part of the Dominion group. It will take a while to get it all sorted out but I think this first contract will be good practise for us, I'm really looking forward to doing something that combines my educational skills and fantastic interpersonal skills (even though I say so myself...).

I must say that I am ready to do something other than reception work now though, but we do need the money - just a minor issue :-) Hopefully we will have the first product up and running by Feb next year, I'll keep you posted how it goes.

We had The Police playing at our local pub last night.

Or rather, we've just moved to our new apartment which is across the road from GM Place - the stadium where the Vancouver Canucks ice hockey team play their home games and sometime music venue for touring bands.

They have reformed for a world tour of which this was the first date, and looking out the kitchen window we could see plenty of limo's taking the estemed audience home afterwards.

To be honest I'd forgotten they were playing in Vancouver as it was a while ago the date was announced, and it wasn't until I looked at the BBC News website the next morning I realised what had been on.

Initially I was confused why a two-year old story about how highly Vancouver is rated as a city was in the list of the top five most read stories. But then I realised that it must have been The Police's presence in the city that had drawn attention to it.

I just came back from the Non-Profit Technology Conference and had to change planes in Salt Lake City.

It's a strange place physically, on a large flat area lodged between the mountains, next to a huge lake with an island that looks like a battleship. I didn't have much time to check it out socially or morally, though I did try by doing a bit of research by going to the Squatters Brew Pub (Terminal C in the event that you also change planes there).

Good selection of beers including a good pale ale, Captain Bastard, Provo Girl (which unfortunately does not feature an Irish Tricolour on the label) and the Polygamy Porter ("why have just one"). Also a wheat beer served with a slice of lemon (probably after many complaints).

So maybe it's not such a straight place as I'd imagined.

We went to see Jarvis Cocker last night. We had to really as he's also originally from Sheffield....

He was in Vancouver as part of a short tour to promote his recent solo album, co-incidentally also named Jarvis, which was released here about a month ago.

It was great to hear some music

Or at least absent from mainstream radio/TV

Any pointers from Vancouver locals welcome.....

It did make me a bit homesick

As Pulp are on my list of local bands that I've never seen, this slightly made up for it.