Wow, Part II

So we arrived at night on November 29th back in Richmond after our harrowing caravan journey through Nanaimo to the Duke Point Ferry Terminal and made it to my parent’s house to park the U-Haul truck. However, the truck got stuck and so we spent a couple of hours with a bag of kitty litter trying to unstuck it which we did.

The next day we drove to our new place and with the help of my parents and brother and Tanya’s parents we moved in. However, with the mess of our apartment, we decided to postpone our first night a day as it took us longer to return the moving truck since it got stuck again once it was unloaded. Argh!! However, after a good solid weekend of unpacking and help from family and friends, we really got settled in.

I started my first day at Vancouver SEACOR on December 1st with a half day of orientation and paperwork. I’m part of the Remedial Systems Group in Vancouver with 50% of my time focused on that and 50% focused on regular site assessment work. Very interesting new work and some of the same stuff as in Nanaimo but new sites and different challenges. For example, it took me two hours to get back to Vancouver from Abbotsford one afternoon. A distance of about 90km. Conversely on the Island, two hours is the time to get from Nanaimo to Victoria (125km) or the almost time (2.5 hours) to Ucluelet from Nanaimo (180km). A trip of 90km is the approximate distance from Nanaimo to Union Bay to the North or Cobble Hill to the South. Each trip would take approx. 50 minutes. So yeah, some definite differences with travel times and mileage, but my field work load has been light, very light, so I’m happy about that as winter sucks for field work. As I am now two months into my new position in Vancouver, I have to say that the atmosphere is very different in Nanaimo. Not better, but different. The lunch room is awesome!!! and overall, I am very happy to be working in the Vancouver office. Plus the fact that I got a very nice raise last week. =D

I must say that things are different and we are very happy to be back in Vancouver. The commute isn’t too bad – ½ hour to work and ¾ of an hour home, usually. We are closer to friends and family, and we have all the great food here. Which is really the main reason we moved back. =) That and Tanya wanting to take UBC courses next year. Actually, I’m thinking of going back and finishing my Arts Degree, perhaps even do an MBA. Although we'll see where things go. Right now, I'm just happy to be moving forward with my career as a consultant and happy that our life back home is going so well.

More posts to come sooner than later. I promise!!

Wow, it's been how long?

Okay. It has been forever since my last update. A lot has happened since my Superheroes quiz thingy. Let’s start with where I left off…

In September I made mention of an opening in the SEACOR Vancouver office that I applied to. Well, As of December 1, 2006, I have been an employee of the SEACOR Vancouver office. It was somewhat of a stressful time after I applied. Tanya applied to the Richmond School District as a TOC and then received an interview. I was told around the end of September that the transfer was a done deal and that all that needed to be done was dot the “i”s and cross the “t”s. However, that took a whole two months which actually was sort of a good/bad thing. I got a chance to work on a lot of cool projects in Nanaimo and work my way up to starting the whole project management aspect of being an engineer. Tanya’s interview went well such that we were starting to contemplate what our future scenarios would be.

1. I get the transfer and Tanya doesn’t get hired by SD38. We would move back of course but perhaps in the Spring of 2007 to give her more time to make money in Nanaimo and to reapply to other school districts.

2. I don’t get the transfer but Tanya does get the job with SD38. This was the worst case scenario because we really didn’t know what to do. Thankfully it didn’t happen.

3. We both get hired. Well, it happened. Actually Tanya got hired first.

Yup, Tanya had her interview and then on October 31st, she called me to tell me that SD38 had called to hire her. She asked them for a day to think it over as scenario 2 seemed to be happening. So I called my boss in Nanaimo to ask him about the transfer since I hadn’t officially heard from Vancouver and well, frankly I would probably move with Tanya and look for a job with another company which he didn’t want to happen (I’m a hot commodity you know. But Tanya is a hotter commodity). He called me back in the afternoon and told me that I got the transfer and that I’d be moving at the end of November. Wow. That fast!!!

So the moving part was the next step. Finding an apartment which we did in North-central Richmond thanks in part to my mom checking the Richmond Review paper. Great location and really bright apartment (Tanya wanted bright after living in our Nanaimo Cave). We actually got the apartment the first weekend we went back to try and look. Very fortunate that the owner liked us and our references checked out. Thanks Brad!

So the whole packing process came next which was difficult since Tanya already started working with Richmond mid-November. She ferried back each week and came back on the weekends. It was a good time to do so since I was out in the field which posed a problem for packing. Surprising how much “stuff” you accumulate in 2.5 years.

The next big problem was the weather. Moving in November isn’t very fun. However, living on the west coast, you usually only have to contend with rain. Not this time though. It snowed. End of November in Vancouver/Nanaimo and it snows with a vengeance.

My brother unfortunately couldn’t make it out to help us move but Jeremy didn’t care about the risks of traveling so he caught a bus to the ferry terminal and we picked him up which was great because we would have flipped out having to move ourselves without his help. We were also grateful to our friend Brad who came out for a couple hours to help us load up the truck. So, after packing up in a downpour of snow, we handed in our keys, made sure the carpet cleaner arrived and then caravanned it to the Duke Point Ferry Terminal arriving just before the big snow storm hit. Nanaimo treated us well, but it was time to move back to Vancouver!!!