Month: July 2006

Canada: Drive-Thru Starbucks

I am ot sure why these happy discoveries have not made their way south of the border, but here in Canada, some of the Starbucks’ stores have drive-thru windows.

However, I can tell you that the one we had coffee at in Westbank, BC showed that the drive-thru folks got preference over the people in the store. This is a formula that needs to be improved.

Otherwise, a grand idea.

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British Columbia and Alberta, BEWARE!

Tomorrow, we are moving off our Vancouver Island base and out into the British Columbia and Alberta hinterland for a few days. It’s highly unlikely that I will have ANY form of connectivity, mainly by choice.

BC and Alberta are highly wired, and even the small town where I grew up has a number of high-speed options to choose from, and my wireless roaming on Rogers Wireless should be seamless.

It has been five years since I ventured beyond Vancouver Island, and I am expecting more than a few changes, and some pretty substantial non-changes (hard to re-configure Roger’s Pass and the Rocky Mountain / Columbia River Trench in even 5 years). The small town of Golden, BC has changed substantially since the last time I was there, thanks to the addition of the Kicking Horse Mountain Resort.

Victoria, BC: Real Estate and Reality

Even though we lived in Victoria together for 5 years (Samantha grew up here), we continue to be shocked by the house prices. We have been cruising the real estate listings, and even accounting for the exchange rate, what we can afford sucks.

Most of the stuff is 1970s nightmare cookie-cutter homes with no personality and even less yard.

It’s a wonder that they can get anyone to move here.

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Notes From Canada: World Cup Coverage

For those of you in the US who are not blessed with a way to tap into the Canadian feeds from the World Cup, you are missing a real treat. And you know what the treat is?

Silence.

It seems that the announcers that Rogers SportsNet and TSN have recruited to cover the games know how to keep their mouths shut and let the action unfold on the screen, with occasional salient comments on the action.

As well, the screen isn’t cluttered with useless graphics and streaming ticker notes. Just the score and a timeclock in the top left corner that disappears, and re-appears in about 2-minute intervals.

Sometimes, just letting the game unfold is the best way to enjoy the beauty and skill of the teams.

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Victoria: Week One

We have survived the wedding. Actually, I make it sound like it was a trial, but it was, in fact, a rather pleasant experience, even for an introvert such as myself. Beautiful setting out at Starling Lane Winery (I highly recommend the Blackberry Port).

Being in Victoria and area has reminded all of us why we love it here; and why we need to move back sooner, rather than later. Not only is Canada a far more civilized country than the United States, Victoria is a far more livable place than Massachusetts. We even did the rounds of some open houses today, reminding ourselves that although this is a far more livable place, the architecture for homes during the period the area was most intensely developed (1945-1980) was brain-damaged, if not completely diseased.

But the benefits are beyond count. An unseasonable warm day is 90F, with very low humidity. Humidity comes in the winter, in the form of rain, rather than snow. We are in plant zone 6-7 (and some 8), which for the gardeners in the crowd means that plants grow here far more abundantly than you could ever dream of in Massachusetts.

And the people are friendly. The gerneralization made about the people of Massachusetts towards outsiders are, in most cases, true. Unless you have lived in Massachusetts for 2-3 generations, you are treated as a newcomer, and should be either shunned or completely distrusted. We have encountered some notable exceptions, but they are few and far between.

So yes, a return to Victoria is definitely beginning to take shape.

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