Carrick to Calgary

P here again! Things are moving on apace - slowly, but surely, we're making progress towards making this empty shell of a house into our Canadian home from home. As I've said before, this shopping business is a little mundane, and half of me feels like we should be making a bigger effort to see as much of Alberta as we can before the ice and snow come back. However, exploring the countryside needs to take a bit of a back seat until we get the house into a homely shape.

We spent most of the weekend building the furniture flat packs that we had delivered from Ikea on Saturday. While the bookshelves, chests of drawers, bedside cabinets and chairs look great now, it wasn't a bundle of fun getting them built! We had the packages delivered at about 11am on Saturday, and by 8pm we had constructed everything except the two armchairs. The shelves were okay, the desk was a little more difficult, and I would certainly baulk at having to construct the 6 drawer unit again.

This is the first item of furniture that we constructed (complete with new amplifier and speakers to play the iPod)



And here are a few of the pictures of the other bits of furniture in their before and after states! (we decided not to show you most of the nasty in between phases!!)

Desk - before





The final desk (+ new computer)




As I said, the drawer unit was a bit of a nightmare - see below:










I also meant to put up a picture of the gorgeous flowers that we had delivered from my mum. dad, Denise and Roy, so now that I've learnt to post pictures, here they are:





Today's major activity was going out to buy a car. The neighbourhood that we live in seems to be populated by many four wheel drive vehicles and pick-up trucks. However, driving around the roads in Calgary has led us to believe that a big truck will not be necessary to get from Tuscany to the Foothills Hospital to Crowchild shopping centre and back, so we finally bit the bullet today and bought what the Canadians call a sub-compact car. After reading a few reviews on the net, we decided to go for a Japanese import - specifically a Honda Civic. We have a Honda dealership just down the road (Village Honda, Crowfoot Shopping Centre, Crowchild Trail), so we thought we'd have a look there. We wandered on to the lot, and within 2 minutes of arriving, our salesman (Gary Rhodes - no, not the chef) had us out in a maroon Honda Civic for a test drive.It was grand; at 2 years old, it had only 36,000 kilometres on the clock, and was being sold for CAD$16,995.. I thought it was fine, but Mr White felt that it was a little basic. Actually, he had his eye on a black 'Sport' version of the same car, which although it had about 70,000 km on the clock, had anti lock breaks, a full electrics package, air conditioning, an automatic gear box, a CD player, heated mirrors etc for the same price (CAD$16,995). So... guess which one we went for??! After a little bit of negotiation, we ended up paying CAD$16,995 for a fully 'loaded' automatic black Honda Civic, with mats and four new ice tyres thrown in to the price.

So, once we get a bank draft sorted out to pay for it, insurance to enable us to drive it, and get new plates, it looks like we'll be the proud owners of a black Honda Civic (complete with a rather restrained rear spoiler)!


We then took a little bit of a drive out in to the coutryside. One great thing about where we live in Calgary is that it takes only 5-10 minutes drive to get out of the city. This evening we headed north towards Airdrie and the roads were something else. Mostly, we were on tarmack...





but there were also a few stretches of gravel road... I can see why you might need a four wheel drive vehicle if you were travelling on gravel for any length of time. We're still driving the Chevrolet Impala that we have hired from Avis, and while its a great car for tarmac, its a nightmare on gravel roads... It has such a huge bonnet and boot and it just seems to fishtail on anything other than tarmac. However, I suppose that won't be much of a problem, given that Gary Rhodes is very keen for us to take the black Civic of his forecourt by Wednesday. I think that he needs to get his sales figures looking good by the end of the month! So, we've checked with Avis, and even though we said that we wanted to hire their Impala until 11th July, they're willing to take it back early. This is great because it saves us a substantial amount of money on the hire costs.

So - that's about it for now. Tomorrow we visit insurance agents, go to our bank for a draft to pay for the car, and then hopefully do something nice in the afternoon.

By the way - I just remembered that I promised a picture of the button up blind (how exciting!!!)




More later..... (and more exciting pics)....

It's almost midnight here in Calgary on the first Friday night since we arrived. I'm lying in bed, with P beside me, blogging on our lovely wireless network. And this is my first blog. I have lots of photos to add to the site, and lots to write about everyday life in Canada, webcames, wireless networks and wireless gaming, but for now I need to start at the start...

7 days have passed since our big going-away party and our slightly disorganised exit from the UK. It's been a real rollercoaster of a week, but we're doing well and there have only been a few small bumps in the road so far...

Leaving our families was tough - much tougher than I had expected. And the people I expected to handle it the worst did surprisingly well, while others proved much more upset than I thought. In particular, P's mother and my dad were hit pretty hard by it all, bringing home to us the real significance of our Big Move. Both seem OK now, but saying goodbye is never easy and this goodbye was pretty awful. Everyone got together to give us a special book of photos of all the members of our two families, each accompanied by a hand-written salutation - I had a look at it today again and it brought a lump to my throat to realise how far from home we are now.

We got our stuff together on Saturday morning, packed our bags and went for lunch with P's dad and sister, thinking we had plenty of time... Then we decided to put together a last minute work permit application for P, at the insistence of Immigration Canada, and suddenly it was time to go the airport... We left some clothes behind as they wouldn't fit in the bags and we didn't even have time to strip the bedclothes before we left! The house was a mess anyway as it was full of Denise and Roy's stuff, and it wasn't really the way I had envisioned leaving the UK.

At the airport we fell foul of the 32 kilo rule, and the airline refused to handle our huge bags as they weighed 37 and 42 kilos respectively! We we going to leave all of our shoes behind to get the weight down, but the girl at check-in took pity on us and let us take our extra weight in a separate plastic bag without even charging us excess baggage! The kindness of strangers, indeed. There's no more humbling experience than being crouched on the floor at the head of a long check-in line with your belongings scattered on the floor, trying to decide whether you should put all of your shoes in the bin or not. I think we now know a little of what it must feel like to be a refugee.

Anyway our shoes arrived safely in Manchester and so did we. We bought a third bag, restowed our shoes and rebalanced our belongings at the lovely Britannia Country House Hotel. We were staying the night here for free, and we didn't get our money's worth... An awful room, surly staff and tasteless food (how can you get a burger and chips wrong?) combined to make our last night in the UK one to forget...

And in the morning it was off to the New World...

(To Be Continued)

First of all - a very big thank you to Mam, Dad, sister and Roy for the beautiful flowers that arrived yesterday. J saw a man coming up the path with a large bouquet, and I'm ashamed to say that the first thought that popped into my mind was "what am I going to put them in?". Needless to say I needn't have worried as they came ready arranged in a glass vase full of water - what wonderful service!

A few more thoughts on very small differences between Calgary and home. First of all, light switches are strange. If the switch is down, its off; if the switch is up, its on.

There's no post on a Saturday, and even more strangely, there's no letter box in the house. Any post is left in a 'post hole' just round the corner (picture to follow). Everyone in the street has their own 'post hole', and a key. So you have to go round the corner and open up your own little post hole door to see if there is any post. If the post fits in the hole, that's fine. However, if its a bit too big, you might find a key in your post hole that opens a larger door. If you have post in the hole with the larger door, you open the door, take out the post, lock up the door again and then post the big door key into a slot at the top of the box (a bit confusing!!).

Curtains are a bit of a problem as well. We have venetian blinds throughout the house but they're not too good at keeping out the light in the mornings, so we decided that we should get some curtains for the bedrooms. At home, I would probably have gone to Harry Corry's or somewhere similar, but I didn't know where to go here. So, we tried a department store (The Bay) and had no luck. If we'd wanted a shower curtain, we would have been spoiled for choice, but there were no actual bedroom type curtains. I asked a lady in the sheets department, and she reckoned that the best place would be Home Outfitters. We dutifully trundled off there, expecting to find pairs of lined curtains in various sizes. However, it turns out that curtains aren't a big thing in this part of the world - no pairs of curtains, no lined curtains..... Anyway, we ended up with two navy tab topped panels for our room, and a button up blind for one of the other bedrooms (picture of button up blind to follow). They look fine, but they weren't exactly what we had in mind when we went out this morning.

So... what else did we do today? Oh yes, we went to get Social Insurance Numbers (a bit like UK National Insurance Numbers, I think). Mr White was able to apply for one, but as I'm an 'accompanying dependant', I don't qualify! I don't think that this is a big problem, as we think its only really necessary if you're working. Hopefullly, once I get my own work permit sorted, I will become a person in my own right again. Actually, that sort of came out wrong - I know I'm a person in my own right - its just that I don't really seem to exist as far as the Canadian authorities are concerned, but maybe that's no bad thing.

We also bought a printer, a stapler, some pens(!), two furnace filters, and a cordless controller for the Playstation 2. This means that Mr J can sit anywhere and play the PS2 without being physically connected to the PS2 (wonderful!!).


This is all rather mundane - but its how things are at the moment. We've sort of decided to take a 'blarge' (now there's a word that would confuse the average Canadian!) at the house to get it as well sorted as possible by the start of next week, but have also promised ourselves that we'll go somewhere nice on Sunday. I reckon that we might start out at the farmers' market in Bearspaw (10 minutes drive up the Crowchild Trail), and then head out to Kananaskis Country - but we'll see. It kind of depends on the weather... So far, the weather during the day time has been reasonably nice, but we've had a couple of nights of rain over the last few days. Apparently though, June is Calgary's wettest month (!), and while it reminds us of home, the biggest problem is that the grass keeps growing and we haven't yet purchased a lawn mower. While this isn't a really big issue, there is a bylaw here that says you can be fined if your grass reaches a certain height. I don't know what that height is, but if it keeps raining at night and being lovely during the day, we could reach it pretty soon. We sort of had a look at lawnmowers today, but it seems that they are all very large petrol jobs. We didn't see any electric mowers at all. Maybe there just aren't any..

We won't be going to far tomorrow, as we're waiting for a delivery to come from Ikea - bookshelves, chairs, bedroom drawers etc. Its due to come between 9am and 2pm, and then the rest of the day will be spent poring over diagrams and wielding alan keys (what fun!). When we get that sorted, we can finally unload the trunks. By the way, the pottery all came completely intact, and I'm delighted to have my own knife block, roasting tin and lasagne dish (I told you life was exciting!!).

More later...

Well, another day of shopping and organising has nearly ended. Spent most of this morning talking to P's mum and dad and J's mum and dad on various webcams. I might be completely biased but having our Apple Mac talk to P's mum and dad's apple mac (with iSight) was a whole lot easier than getting our Apple Mac talking to J's mum and dad's PC. I suppose it just takes a little perservance to get different systems to talk to each other (there's a metaphor for the world's problems if ever I saw one!!). Anyway, we spent this morning trying to figure out if our two trunks had cleared Canadian customs or not. Customs said they had, but the shipping agents said they hadn't, so after a mad dash across town, we made it to customs (10 minutes before they closed), got the right documentation, got to the Phoenix warehouse, cleared the trunks and managed to get them into the hire car. To be honest, the car is somewhat bigger than we had intended, but it has proved very worthwhile. We had intended to hire a compact sized car, but they didn't have any compacts, so after a bit of negotiation, we ended up with a full size car. Although this was approx $200 more than we anticipated paying, it turns out that moving the trunks from the shipping warehouse to our house in Tuscany would have cost $250, and given that we have brought several boot (or should I say trunk) loads of stuff from Ikea and other shops, we think that it was probably worth the extra money.

I am delighted to report that I now have a hairdryer, an iron and more than one bath towel. We also have now procured 8 knives, 8 forks, 8 spoons, a kettle, a coffee maker (hallejuha), a full set of saucepans and various kitchen implements. J has also set up the speakers and amplifiers so that the iPod can play its full selection of all the CDs that we had at home. Ikea is a wonderful shop - we have purchased a couple of chairs and footstools, a couple of sofas, many bookshelves (shocking - I know!!), bedside cabinets, bedroom drawers, towels, a dressing gown for Mr J, slippers, bathroom and kitchen bins, candles and various odds and ends for the kitchen.


By the way, it looks like the trunks and contents have arrived in tact. We haven't actually gone through them yet, but on first glance, they look fine. We'll see tomorrow, and I'll repot on the intactness of the pottery that we thought we would send.

Right now we're sittin listening to music played on the iPod through our newly purchased exdemo amplifiers and speakers, while Mr J checks through his PS2 games (on his second hand PS2 through our ex demo TV) - everything seems to be working perfectly so far, and we're delighted.

I'll be back tomorrow with further updates...

For future reference - 1 or 2 days to finalise travel/packing for a 2
year trip IS NOT ENOUGH!!!). We left our house in a complete mess,
bedclothes still on the bed, piles of rubbish lying in corners etc, and
basically left complete chaos in our wake (a million apologies to
everyone left to sort out the mess). Anyway, we have now made it to
Calgary, and they have let me in to the country as "the accompanying
dependent" of Mr Jonathan White. Mind you I could get used to it...

As an illustration of my state of mind on Saturday - we were sitting in
departures at Belfast waiting for the flight to Manchester - when I
suddenly remembered that I had the keys to the hire car in my bag - had
totally forgotten to hand them back. This was after a foo-fa at
Belfast check in of course! Mr White had gone to TK Maxx and bought
two very large suitcases, which we proceeded to fill. One weighed 42kg
and the other weighed 38kg!! We knew we had a baggage allowance of
30kg each but we figured that we could pay for the excess. What we
didn't know was that, for health and safety reasons, airlines simply
won't handle bags that weigh over 30kg. You can have as many 30kg bags
as you like, so what we should have done was to have smaller bags, but
more of them. Well... you know those people you see on the "Airline"
programme who are scrambling about at check in, hauling stuff out of
bags - that was us (complete mortification!). The check in lady was
lovely and gave us two large see through plastic sacks that we ended up
putting our shoes in and checking through to Manchester. Thankfully
they arrived and we were able to buy another hold all in Manchester,
where we repacked. The flight from Manchester was uneventful - Thomas
Cook airlines aren't too bad - a bit cramped but we had a choice of
films/TV and the food was fine (also, they took pity on us and didn't
charge for excess baggage).

So we got here - passed through immigration really quickly, had a fight
with Avis who didn't have the car that I had reserved (ended up with a
bigger car but managed to negotiate a better price) and left the
airport at about 2pm. We knew we wouldn't be able to get into the
house until 5pm, so we ended up in Ikea (where else!!) to buy cutlery,
2 bedside lights and 2 mugs. We had bought sheets etc last time we
were here, and we knew the bed was already in the house. Came up to
Tuscany (corny - but that's the name of the housing estate!), met Emma
(who lived in the house before us), got the keys, made up the bed and
crashed out.

The house is as nice as we remembered it - there's no furniture (apart
from 2 Ikea chairs that Emma and Richard have loaned to us, and our
bed) but we have plans to return to Ikea and sort that out. Yesterday,
we ended up buying a TV (ex demo - $50 off retail price), an amplifier
(to play the iPod through - also ex demo) and 2 speakers - so you can
see where the priorities lie in our house! I also went and did a big
shop - it took me absolutely ages 'cos I haven't a clue about brand
names etc. For example, we have liquid detergent for the washing
machine that's called Purex, the fabric conditioner is called Snuggle,
the cling film is Glad, and the stuff you spray the shower with is
Tilex. Its a bit disconcerting when you have to read the labels on
everything you buy. The other really mad thing is that you most
certainly do not pack up your own shopping. I started yesterday to put
the stuff into the trolley and the till ladies were horrified. A wee
man comes along with a cart, packs your stuff into bags for you,
trundles out to the car after you and lifts everything into the boot
for you. It feels a bit strange but I suppose that you would get used
to it.

Anyway, that's it so far. We have to go to customs today and clear the
trunks through, and Jonathan has to go for an interview downtown to
prove to the Albertan medical authorities that he actually is a doctor.
Given that he peeled a large portion of his finger off yesterday with
a new potato peeler, I'm not sure that he'll be able to convince them
of his proficiency with sharp instruments. You never know, we might be
home by the end of the week!!