Vancouver living

One Saturday in late November, after more than a month of almost daily rainfall in which I somehow managed to buy and loose three umbrellas, it finally happens: The sun is shining even though it is a weekend. On those previous, rare occasions when the sun managed to fight its way through the clouds, I was usually sat inside the office, facing the mountains in the distance through the large glass front of our building in Richmond. Today however, I’m not working and I’ll be enjoying every dry minute of the day over in Deep Cove in North Vancouver, where I’m heading for a hike to Quarry Rocks.

Quarry Rocks

Beautiful nature is easily accessible in Vancouver – with or without a car. The hike to Quarry Rocks starts in the scenic little Deep Cove, where I arrive just after lunch by means of two busses from East Vancouver. It’s only a short, easy hike via a well-developed trail through a lush forest. In some places, wooden stairs and bridges guide hikers over little streams and waterfalls descending from the mountain. The air is fresh and humid, and after less than 1.5 hours I arrive at the lookout point of Quarry Rocks. Little boats are zooming through the sea below me while I’m overlooking the mountains surrounding me, the city in the distance and the houses and bay of Deep Cove. It’s chilly and the viewpoint is astonishingly crowded for this time of the year – I assume more people had an itch to get out of the house at last – so I don’t hang around and make my way back to Deep Cove. Before I take the bus back to East Van, I treat myself to a honey-glazed doughnut at Honey’s Doughnuts following a recommendation I received from my lovely Japanese flatmate Shogo.

Writing for BeatRoute

More than a month ago, while I was brooding over my job search, I found an ad on craigslist for volunteer writers for a free local music and entertainment magazine called BeatRoute which I replied to with a sample of my writing from my blog. I was thrilled to receive a prompt response from the managing editor, inviting me to their next editorial meeting early November. A bit nervous, I went there straight after work to see what this was all about.

As I am entering the room in East Hastings Village, it’s already packed to the last seat. On all available couches and chairs, creative-looking people are engaged in conversations with each other as I stand in the door in my office gear, feeling a bit out of place. But as I direct myself into the room, people smile at me welcomingly, squeeze together to make space and offer me a beer before the meeting starts.

After a brief round of introductions from everyone including the editors of the different sections of the magazine, each of them goes through the list of available assignments for the upcoming edition. These range from album previews, which require interviews with the artists, over previews of upcoming events to reviews of movies, live music, comedy shows and more. If someone is interested in an assignment, they just sign up for it there and then.

I’m feeling quite intimidated – most of the people in the room seem like experienced writers and very knowledgeable in their field. So far, I have not even heard of most of the bands named for album review or live music assignments, let alone the comedians. However, one band name rings a bell – a Canadian Indie band called Wintersleep – because my friend Andy told me about them. So I sign up to do a live review for the band – which means free entrance to the concert – as well as a preview of a Christmas cookie making class held by a local café, for which I will interview the owner of the café and the baker-in-chief. If you’re interested to read more about my first stabs at journalistic writing, or if you’re just keen to hear how truly amazing Wintersleep was and how much fun the Holiday Cookie Party of the Uncommon Café is going to be, click on those links and read on 🙂

Work / Life

Thanks to my previous job at Canon, I was lucky enough to find a proper (qualified) job, which isn’t necessarily a given on a working holiday visa in Canada. And even better, I can also follow my passion for writing here as I am creating communications to share global success stories about a recent product launch. So while most of my four flatmates work in restaurants and have late starts, I usually make sure to get up early so I can catch some colleagues from Europe before they clock off and I’m usually the first person to leave the house. Lucky for me, one of my lovely colleague’s commute takes her just past my house, so on most days I wait for here at the bus stop next to a Chinese supermarket on my road. As I usually wait there at around the same time, 8:15 am, the same bus driver of line 27 keeps coming past and I waved him on the first time to make sure he doesn’t stop for me. Since then, the friendly man with the white beard and I just keep waving and smiling at each other in the morning. One day just last week though, the bus driver actually gets off the bus while the passengers are sat inside with puzzled looks on their faces, to let me know that it’ll be the last time he’s driving the route. He just wanted to say hello to the woman with the friendly smile! I almost feel a bit emotional about this little gesture. He actually reminds me a bit of Santa Claus! But more about the festive season in my next post – for now I will leave you with some (much-needed) tips for cheap living in Vancouver.

Ideas for living (relatively) cheaply in Vancouver

• Supermarkets: Grocery shopping in Vancouver isn’t cheap, so it’s worth checking out where you can save on your supplies. Unfortunately, there isn’t the one supermarket or shop that is cheaper than all the others, so it’s worth looking at the flyers for special offers, but as a rule of thumb, I found the following supermarkets cheapest – especially when buying the no-brand products:
  • No Frills
  • Real Canadian Superstore
  • Asian supermarkets usually do cheaper vegetables and produce
• Clothing and home accessories: Vancouver has A LOT of really good second hand shops, or thrift shops as they are called here. In particular Value Village is amazing – they sell everything from used clothing to home electronics to furniture, books, games etc. – in great condition.
• Dollarama is the dollar store and sells all sorts of smaller items, e.g. kitchen accessories, cosmetics, seasonal items, cheaper than anywhere else (apart from second hand but it can even be cheaper than that).
• Dinners: Places in Downtown such as The Moose Vancouver and The Factory are doing food for as cheap as 5.95 CAD (3.59 GBP / 4.27 EUR). They have actually quite a varied menu with burgers, pasta, chicken, nachos plus daily specials, e.g. chicken wings on Tuesday and steak and prawns on Sunday in The Moose.
• A good way to meet people while at the same time saving on the entry fee for clubs is to sign up for social meetups at Meetup. Often these casual get-togethers of people looking for peers are organised in clubs and members of meetup get in for free.