Not your average Sunday...

Thought I would entertain you all with this anecdote from my Sunday...

So, I'm having a nice lazy Sunday, I had just loaded my washing into the machine and was happily sat on the sofa watching Back to the Future. I look over towards my kitchen area and I literally see a wave of water pouring through my apartment....

I leap up, roll up my trousers and before I know it i'm ankle deep in water, hot water at that. My washing machine had decided to empty onto the floor rather than out the water outlet pipe. So there's me hopping about in the water, trying to grab everything off the floor, pulling all the electricals out of the wall, turning off the washing machine and desperatly trying to find the number for my landlord. Meanwhile the water is seeping through the floors and through the walls heading towards the bedroom and wardrobe. If only I could of seen myself at this point...

So, my horrified landlord appears, telling me that they had infact been doing something with the washing machine during the week but they had given her the ok to use everything... clearly they were wrong. A lot of mopping up and drying the floor with towels later, I grab my overnight things and head up to another apartment that is empty in the building.

So the next day, turns out all the floors had to be taken up and there are massive drier things in there, See below for the sad looking pictures of my former apartment. I spent this evening moving my things out of that apartment and into this new one!

I am just thankful that I didn't turn on the machine and then go out.... imagine the horror I would of returned to, ruined clothes, water pouring everywhere... HA

The first Ski day of the season!

Yesterday was my first day back on the Ski Slopes for this season.... and damn do I ache today! Getting old!

A group of us ThoughtWorkers headed to Sunshine Village, Canada in the amazing Banff national park. A bizzare place, within minutes of entering the park on the way up to Sunshine, we had spotted 3 Elk and a Bald Eagle....

Sunshine village is about 2 hours max from Calgary, so like a child at xmas we left Calgary at 8am, super excited! By the time we got up to Sunshine, it certainly wasn't living up to its name, I think its all a marketing ploy, it was dumping... But we won't complain as its still early season and we need all the snow we can get!

Also took a bit of getting used to the cold, it was -10 degrees most of the day, and its going to get a lot colder, but still those chairlift rides were a little chilly! Sunshine village resort is pretty epic, much bigger than anything I have ever skied before, despite the fact that most of it wasn't even open yet.

Well it was great to get back onto the slopes (note to self must go to the gym more....), and heres to a great rest of the season :-)

Week 3 in Calgary

So, 3 weeks in eh (see the Canadian lingo coming in already!)

I'm still in my Corporate Apartment, I have actually found and signed the lease for another apartment, on the other side of Downtown Calgary, but don't move in until the 1st Dec. Looking forward to moving into my own place a lot. The final stages of settling in.

At the moment I'm up by the river, but the new place is 12 block further Downtown, closer to the supermarket and pubs and shops and stuff, so that will be good, and hopefully I'll be able to survive without a car. Its obviously smaller than the place I'm in now, but I'm confident that I will work out well, the furnishing are all pretty nice, as it used to be let as a corporate apartment. I will report back and send pics when I move in in a couple of weeks.

After struggling a bit over the first week, I'm settling in a lot better now. finding the apartment helped, so did setting myself a time to make decisions about my future here. I've set aside a year to settle in with both the country and with the work, and try not to worry about making any long term decisions until then. Also, whats been brilliant, is that there are quite a few 'travelers' at ThoughtWorks at the moment, be it over for a few months or a year, so they are normally up for going out and doing things at the weekend and in the evenings. There are also a few new starts so we're forming a bit of a crowd, which is really nice! Very ThoughtWorky spending all our days and nights together in a heap, but it makes it much easier to settle in.

As for work, things are still quite quiet, theres not as much work as they thought there might be (seems the story of my life at the moment!), so there are quite a lot of us on 'the beach' waiting for work. We have a little project going on, which I was struggling to find my 'place' on, but we've just kicked off some more analysis work on it, and feel much more comfortable now. Keeps us out of trouble at least.

We had a gathering of "Girl Geeks" last week. Its something that ThoughtWorks have started in Calgary to get together female IT workers from around the city, to share ideas, thoughts and experiences. We went for Indian food, and it was actually quite fun. I thought it would be scary and too Oestragen fuelled but infact it wasn't, there were a bunch of really interesting IT women of all ages.

Its chilly here, about zero or under most of the time, had snow over the weekend, but not got to the really cold stuff yet! In general the weather is pretty good, mostly sunny and cold, but today there was really low cloud, so you couldn't see the top of the downtown Skyscrapers which I found a bit odd!
Skiing wise, the mountains opened last weekend, with a reasonable snow coverage. Didn't manage to get up there this weekend, but hopefully next weekend. I'm also vaguely looking into re-instating my Candian Ski Instructing qualifications and doing some training sessions, in an attempt to keep it up but also to meet some like minded snow people hopefully!

This week I hope to go and see Bond again, it's only just got to this side of the pond so the others havn't seen it yet. We have a monthly staff meeting on Wednesday which I'm told ends in the pub, and a few other bits a pieces, lots to keep me busy!

I will be back in the UK over Xmas, from the 19th to the 28th December, which will be really nice, looking forward to it, only a month away!

I've included some pics, of our trip to Elbow Falls, of the park by my apartment and of our attempt to bring Friday pub to Calgary!

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So I move to Calgary

I've made it to Canada!

After a rather leisurely time back in Devon I'm am back working and I'm living in Calgary.

I am of course pretty jet lagged after arriving a couple of days ago, so I'm struggling to write anything too inspired, but here are a few pics of the apartment that I'm staying in untill I find one of my own, Bye for now.