sheff2van : sheffield -> vancouver

We went to our first ice hockey game, the Vancouver Canucks v. Minnesota Wild, for Rowan's birthday. Luckily the Canucks won after extra-time and a shoot-out, thanks to some good saves by his hero Robert Luongo, the goal-keeper.

I'm only just getting the hang of knowing which team is playing better, who is likely to score and whether a goal was due to good attacking or bad defensive play. It's coming though.

Compared to UK football (soccer) matches the music is better, but I was a bit thrown by the national anthem played before the game as it was only a league match. It was against a US team though.

There's more shoving and pushing on the pitch. Although some of it seems a bit ritualistic and half-hearted, referees do not intervene until somebody falls down. As a friend of mine made out, he once went to a boxing match and a game of ice hockey broke out half-way through.

Took the kids to school on the bus/seabus again today.

Tickets are valid for 90 minutes travel on buses, the skytrain (elevated light railway) or the seabus (which goes back and forward across the harbour).

For the last 4 days in a row the time stamped on my ticket has been 9:24. It's getting slightly predictable - I almost wish it would be late one morning just for variety. But then it's timed to get to the seabus on time so if it more than 2 minutes late we'd miss it.

We went to open an account with a Canadian bank today.

It wasn't exactly like 'Bowling for Columbine' where Michael Moore gets given a free gun for opening an account, but the background music that they had on while we were there included 'Armed and Extremely Dangerous' by The Three Degrees.

The main difference between the banking systems is that here banks charge by the number of transactions, and there is a fee for drawing money out of bank machines that belong to other banks.

Keeping in touch with home is easier now using email. I also listen to the radio online - it's great waking up and choosing whether to listen to Terry Wogan, Steve Wright, Chris Evans or Woman's Hour. We are 8 hours behind the UK so it's all happened by the time we get up! Simon is very happy that he can get up on Sat morning and see the football results immediately :-) Crystal Palace don't seem to do any better though ;-)

The TV is quite bad here, due to the excessive amount of adverts you get so I will often sit and listen to a play online with headphones on in the evening (we have a small apartment at the moment so there's not many places you can go....) - it's very reassuring somehow, to hear UK accents. What did we do before t'internet?

It was the last day of freedom before the boys went to school yesterday so we went 10 pin bowling in Burnaby where we lived when we were over in 2004. There isn't another 10 pin bowling alley downtown which I was very surprised by. Aparantly they have 5 pin bowling here which is unique to Vancouver, but I shied away from going to it with the boys as it is quite hard to do when you first go.

Travelling back across the Burrard Inlet on the seabus the sun was shining on the North Shore Mountains and it was really beautiful. I thought, this is a fantastic place to live, we're so lucky. It is absolutely stunning when the sun shines.

People are, for the most part, very smiley, and want to help you if at all possible. They do have a problem with my accent though. Most people who work in shops and coffee bars are Chinese or Japanese and are used to hearing the North American version of English - they don't understand my dropped vowels, so I often have to repeat myself.