Messages from abroad, not massages from a broad

I was at the bar recently and to my dismay, the only thing on TV was women’s College Basketball.  Women’s basketball is typically unwatchable.  I’m not sure how the WNBA stays in business, but it’s just not enjoyable.  It’s boring to watch a bunch of butch lesbians running around on the court.  None of them can shoot and none of them can dunk.  It’s kinda like watching high school ball because the score rarely gets higher than 50-60 points.  On the other hand, someone mentioned that there was a theory about women’s ball; in nearly every play a player either a) falls down or b) launches a 3-pointer.  I thought this was a fascinating observation so I decided to spend a few minutes watching the tube to see if this theory held true.  And sure enough, the first play that I saw, Rutgers was running around along the arc, and when the shot clock was winding down, boom, up went a 3 point shot. It was badly missed (of course) and the opposing team went up the court and bodies flew all over the place.   It was hilarious.  Knowing that either one of those two things was likely to happen suddenly made women’s basketball way more fun to watch.  I bet you could turn it into a drinking game.

I miss my car.  I miss the convenience of driving to the grocery store or to the mall.  I tend to try and limit my trips, ’cause it’s inconvenient to make even one shopping trip.  I seem to always buy a lot of stuff in one go because of that convenience factor.  I don’t know if that is logically a better idea or not because it’s a major pain in the ass when it comes to hauling stuff back to the apartment.  I mean, should I make lots of little time consuming expensive trips to the store or should I buy as much stuff as I can carry in one go and feel the pain of carrying too much.  It’s such a dumb dilemma and it only amplifies the longing of a vehicle.  Damn you Amazon, Linens-N-Things, and Bed, Bath and Beyond for your stupid 20% off coupons.  They keep luring me back and I keep purchasing more and more.  That reminds me, I was at LNT the other day, and I was dressed like a bum: shorts, sandels, disheveled hair, unshaven.  In any case, I was dressed like an employee, but I had, not one, but two stupid people ask me if I worked there.  I clearly wasn’t and although I thought the first person was just an honest mistake (she said I was folding back some towels so carefully that she thought I might have worked there), but when the second person approached me and asked if I worked there, then I felt a little offended.  I literally paused and looked up and down at myself before I rudely said ‘no’.  This second person saw me in plain site and I didn’t have a red apron on, or a name tag, or dreadlocks or anything that indicated that I was employed there, but for some reason, in her eyes, I looked like I worked there.  I don’t get how people can be so stupid. My ‘real job’ makes me loathe dumb people.  I’ve interacted with far too many stupid people over the years.

Anyhoo, my new place is quickly shaping up and I don’t know if the funky smell is dissipating or maybe I’m just getting extremely used to the odour.  Or maybe the furniture and stuff is absorbing/blocking the smells.  I don’t really know.  I was worried that my sofa wasn’t going to fit in the elevator, but it turns out that they did because I’m sitting on it as I’m typing. 
They’re a good fit and I like them a lot.  I’m glad I didn’t purchase the loveseat.  It would have cluttered up the place a lot.  I started using my old tiny futon as my coffee table/ottoman.  It’s actually perfect size.  It might look a little odd, but it kinda functions alright.  I wanna reupholster it so it looks a little nicer, but for now, it is what it is.

I haven’t talked much about work because it would probably just be full of complaints and whining, and since this is such a public venue, it wouldn’t be smart for me to talk (bitch) about my j-o-b.  However, I have to mention about an event that Blackboard held for the people that relocated out to DC.  The events committee had a great idea to hold a meet ‘n greet evening with us transplanted folk and the locals at work.  It was a nice social event at a bar/hookah lounge and I was able to meet a few new people.  It was actually a surprisingly enjoyable evening.  Open bar and shitty sushi to wash down the beers.  Someone had the bright idea of supplying the group with books on American culture.  I know it wasn’t completely serious, but on the otherhand it wasn’t completely appropriate either. It was a ridiculous book called "Hello! USA". This book was clearly for non-North American folk and was full of retarded information that we (the Canadians) clearly didn’t need.
The immigrant/FOB inspired book was full of hilariously good stuff though.  I’ll highlight a few of my favourite entries below: 

1. Personal hygiene. You probably will notice that:

• most American bathe or shower every day: in general, they do not like body odor, strong perfumes, or strong after-shave lotions
• American women usually shave their legs and underarms

2. At a  party or in the work place, you may meet others from your own country. Do not have a long conversation in your own language and ignore the others around you

3.   Bars and nightclubs.  When you meet someone at a bar or nightclub:

• Do not give your address or telephone number to any person you just met: get to know the person first
• Do not go home with anyone alone.

Alright.  Enough of that rubbish.  I think you get the context of the book’s contents.  If anybody has a cousin coming from China or India, let me know and I’ll lend them my copy.  I suppose we had too many beers by the end of the night because the restaurant staff told us that we were too loud and asked us to turn down the volume. Then they lost it on us when a couple people started running around.  I believe the exact quote was "Alright, you guys have to stop jerking around!"  That’s when we kinda got kicked out.  Fun times!

That’s all I got for now.  Take it easy.  3 weeks and I’m home.  Go Canucks!

~Anth

I think I’ve seen the latest Gap commercial a dozen times and it
wasn’t until tonight when I noticed that it was Claire Danes prancing
around and ripping off the pants off of some dude.  At least I think it
was her.  I don’t think it was a coincidence that I just noticed her after all these weeks.  I have to attribute this discovery to my new 50" TV and
the superb clarity of HDTV.  :) 

At this point in time, I am not sure if  should be saying ‘Wow! Time flies!  I can’t
believe it’s already been two months’ or ‘Whoa, it’s only been two
months?  Feels like I’ve been here forever."  My emotions teeter
between those two sentiments.  With that said, I had to move out of my
cushy, furnished, corporate apartment this weekend.  It kinda felt like bad timing during the move cause the weather turned to shit.  It was cold and rainy and it snowed on Friday night too.  Anyway, to recap, I’ve moved out to Bethesda, Maryland.  I went to pick up my keys on Thursday afternoon and I went to check out the apartment.  Here are a couple pictures of the place:

They cleaned up a lot of it and the bathroom looked a lot better than the last time I had seen it.
 

The only thing that bothered me about this place was the smell of it.  It smelled like they had just applied some kinda pesticide and after 5-10 min in the place, it’s not that noticeable, but whenever I walk into the place, I smell it right away. I hope it’s not toxic! I’d open the windows to air out the place, but it’s freezing these days. It’s annoying enough so I invested in some aerosol sprays to freshen up the place.  I may need some candles in the future too.

Overall, the move was a smooth success.  I borrowed the hand truck from work and I rolled it through the streets of downtown back to the apartment.  It made a world of difference.  I had so many big boxes and heavy items, it would have taken forever if I attempted to move this stuff the old fashioned way.  Many thanks to Jon and Christine for helping me out.  We finished it off in two trips and we even squeezed in dinner at Cheesecake Factory.  Yummers!

I took the next day off to meet up with the other movers.  These are the guys with my stuff from Vancouver.  Two dudes rolled in on time and the first thing they wanted to do was use my toilet.  I hadn’t even christened my bowl myself and these guys wanted to do it for me.  Fucking chumps!  I let them since they hadn’t started to move my stuff yet.  I didn’t want them to "accidentally" break some of my belongings.  So they started to bring up my stuff and I went to check on the washroom to see if they had made a mess.  I saw went drops of some kind of liquid on the floor.  I only hopes it was their washed wet hands that they had shaken to make the drips on the floor and not some other body part that they shook all over the place.  Grrrrr!!

So I left the door wide open to my apartment to let the movers do their job more efficiently.  One of the guys had just rolled in some stuff and I heard a woman at the door and she was snooping around; "Oh! Is someone moving in today?" and the mover replied "Yup.  He’s moving in today".  She proceeded by asking "Is he nice person?" ~ now, as I heard this, I thought, ‘how the heck would this guy know’, but the mover said "Uh yeah, he’s a nice guy.  He’s right here.  Do you want to meet him?"  I looked at him and we both gave each other the look like this woman was crazy.  So I stuck my head around the corner and I saw this old frazzled looking woman with glasses, terrible makeup (like freaky ugly orange lipstick), and nasty ass teeth.  She invited herself into my apartment and we exchanged plesantries.  So now I’ve met one of my neighbours and her name is Margarite.  She left and the mover and I just started laughing because we both thought she was nuts.  Sweet!! Crazy neighbours; I’m overjoyed!  I just hope she doesn’t make me a pie or something.
I spent the rest of the night unpacking and cleaning up. 

The next day, Jon helped me pick up my TV.  We were pretty lucky because when I got to the place, the guy said he was just about to leave early cause he wasn’t expecting anyone to show up that afternoon.  I think if we were 5 min later, he would have left.  Lucky for me.  The timing of the whole weekend was quite impressive.  I unpacked the TV
and set it up and 15 minutes later, the Comcast guy showed up to install my cable and internet (even Dane Cooke was happy). The guy didn’t charge me an installation fee and he even credited me $20 because he couldn’t make it on Friday.  Awesome guy!  He told me that everyone in Bethesda was a bunch of snobs.  This wasn’t the first time I heard this.  I guess I’ll find out if this is true soon enough or maybe I’ll just fit in because I’m such a stuck up bastard too.

OK.  So it’s been a few days now and since I didn’t bring much furniture with me.  I’ve resorted to turning this place into a cardboard palace.  The homeless people would be so jealous.  Check out my cardboard coffee table and my cardboard side table:

I really need to fill up the space of this apartment because it echoes when I’m on the phone.   I need rugs and some tables.  Actually, what I really need is a bigger kitchen.  The kitchen at this place is sooooo tiny.  I have no counter space.  Check out this picture:

You see that space in front of the toaster?  That’s all the counter space I have left to use.  I’ll figure something out.  I sure hope my couch can fit the elevator.  I measured it this morning and I’m really not sure if it’ll fit.  It’ll be extremely tight if it does.  Cross your fingers for me.

Anyway, it’s nice to sleep in my own bed and the commute to work isn’t too bad.  I have to get used to all of this because I am kinda stuck here for a year.  So I’ll make the best of it.  That’s all I got for now. 

I finally did it.  I finally signed up for Vonage the other night.  Special thanks goes out to Tams and Terry!!!  So nobody (including me) has an excuse not to call from time to time.  Shoot the shit with me or fill me in on the latest gossip or talk to me about anything you want.  I’d love to hear from you.  I set up a virtual 604 number so you Vancouver folk can call me at local rates and so it won’t cost you any long distance fees.  Isn’t that great?  I only set it up that way cause I was thinking of you guys.  So use it!  Hank called me to ask about the name of some psycho guy that I knew.  Perfect call; it was completely irrelevant to anything, almost unimportant, but interesting at the same time, and it didn’t really cost any of us anything extra.  So, copy it off of my MSN name or drop me an e-mail and I’ll send it your way too.  It’s a decent number and I didn’t even pick it myself.  It’s got lots of 8s and a couple pairs of numbers.  Shout out to Mary Ho too!!  Wassup Ho?

There’s one thing I’ve noticed here and it seems somewhat consistent with a lot of the stores and takeout restaurants I’ve been to lately.  These places always have a tonne of front line staff on duty.  And most of them are absolutely useless.  It’s like they stand around doing nothing.  I’ve seen this twice at Best Buy and a few times at McDonald’s just to name a couple of examples.  Nothing picks my bum more than standing in line, and seeing 7 staff in front of me, just walking by the counter or I’ll hear one of them declaring, ‘I’m going on break!’ or even worse, they’re just standing there staring back at me.  It’s not a fucking staring contest fools!  Bah!!  I’m all for giving people jobs and stuff and keeping the youth out of trouble, but I just wish they were a little more pro-active and a little less dumb.  This doesn’t represent all of the establishments, but it sure happens a lot more than I care for and it sucks.  I’d rather be waiting in line due to a shortage of staff rather than a lack of skilled employees.

So I’ve had people ask me "Do you feel settled in yet?" and for the most part, I think I do feel quite settled in.  I guess there’s just a little part of me that realizes that I cannot be fully settled in until I move out of my cushy corporate housing suite.  I’m less than a week away and I’ll be able to sleep in my own bed soon.  There’s actually a bunch of things that I’ll be looking forward to, like having a DVR/PVR again.  Downloading TV shows has gotten stale and it’s a total pain in the ass.  I cannot wait to have a machine record my shows for me.  I’m also looking forward to HBO.  Woohoo!  Just in time for the re-start of Entourage.  It starts back up later this month.  HDTV!  That reminds me of something related.  I bought and ordered a TV over two weeks ago and it said that it shipped the next day.  I still haven’t received it yet and I’m actually a little concerned that it will not get delivered until I move out.  That might be a problem.  I’m not sure how I’ll be able to take shipment of it, but I guess I got 5 days to sort that out.  I hope it shows up tomorrow.  That’s a lot of TV related items.  I cannot wait to get access to all my stuff too.  It’s been in storage up until now, and I’m longing for my things.  I want my chopsticks and my pillow and my spring jacket.

This weekend, I made a special effort to look for a couch.  I wanted to buy a sofabed so I could have a place for visitors to stay if they passed through town.  So I was originally thinking of buying one from IKEA, but it was still $1000, and I know a lot of people that haven’t been too happy with their IKEA couches, and plus it was a little inconvenient for me to go there, so I decided to take a look at some other
furniture stores.  I spent over an hour at this one store (Jennifer Convertible) which was known for having cheap prices and good package deals, but I just couldn’t find the right couch there.  I spent so much time there and I was getting fed up with the place.  I asked the dude working there which ones cames in different colours and he said they all came in different colours except for two of them.  So I was looking at one set and I asked him what other colours it came in and he went to look and 5 minutes later he said ‘that one only comes in that colour’.  What the???? Didn’t I just ask you which couches came in different colour options?  This guy clearly wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed because later on, he was talking to some other customers and he just went on another tangent mid-conversation.  He started talking about Borat and how funny it was and how he loved it.  He was so loud and obnoxious.  It gave me a headache listening to him.  He couldn’t even pronounce the name properly; he pronounced it as Barett and nobody knew what he was talking about for a few minutes.  His topic of conversation literally came out of thin air too.  Anywya, there were some other half decent looking sofas, but they either felt like shit or they didn’t come as a Sleeper, or the price changed if I wanted it in a different color.  Stupid!  So I said ‘F This!’ and I just walked out of that place and I vowed never to return.  I went to another place, that specialized in Natuzzis and other nice Italian sofas, but they were pretty expensive and he had limited colour options too (like an orange-red or purple).  If I wanted black, it would be a special order and I’d have to wait 5 months.  I suppose if I had an old couch to use in the meantime, then 5 months might not have been a big deal, but since I don’t, then 5 months sitting on the floor at home seems a little excessive.

Today, I went to Macy’s.  Good suggestion Lisa!  It turns out, they had a sale going on the last 2.5 months and I showed up on the very last day.  They had a bunch of nice leather couches with sleeper options and their prices were kinda decent too.  So after trying out a few couches and mulling over which pieces to get, I decided to buy a Italsofa brand couch.  They didn’t have black in stock but dark brown was just as nice so I placed in order for a sofabed and a chair.  It looks like the one here: Blair Italsofa.  I agonized over the decision of purchasing the loveseat or the couch as well as the matching ottoman, but in the end, I decided that less was more in terms of saving space and I figured that buying less pieces would save me money too.  Plus, the idea of moving back home one day with too many pieces of furniture kinda freaked me out.  So that’s that, another day, another purchase.  It turns out that Italsofa is a divison of Natuzzi.  I’m sure some of you knew that, but I sure didn’t.  So now I get to say that I bought a Natuzzi couch.  Haha.  I’m such a baller sometimes!

Alright, I said too much.  I’m out!  Oh, one more thing.  I’m coming back to Vancouver on April 21st for a visit.   See ya then!!!

~Anth

Helloooooooooo there.

It’s been a couple weeks since I’ve been here, and since then, I’ve had two out-of-town guests (Big Wes and Liana) visit me.  Thanks for the visit you two!  I really enjoyed the company.  It was awesome seeing you guys and it was a breath of fresh air to see some familiar faces.  When are the rest of you gonna swing by and say hello?  I have a few museums that I still wanna see.  :) 

It’s been nearly two months already and I’m starting to plan my vacation for the year and I think I will be heading back to Vancouver up to five times in the next 10 months.  That’s a lot of visits and I’m glad I only have 4 weddings to come back to.  Anymore and I’d probably have to skip one or two.  So no shotgun weddings ya hear?  Use a condom!  Anyway, I think I’m gonna come back in April to celebrate some birthdays, including mine.  I don’t think I’d have it any other way but to celebrate the big 3-0 with my friends.  So start planning something late April.  I hope that the Canucks are still in the Playoffs.

Well, what’s been happening here of late?  Not much.  Same ol stuff.  I went to a basketball game with Wes and as much as a fan I used to be (back in the days of the Grizzlies), I couldn’t get into the game that night.  Even with the crazy ending and the close game, I just couldn’t enjoy it that much.  B-ball stands for boring-ball.  I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that I didn’t really care about the Wizards or the Kings.  I think I found myself cheering for the Kings though.  I’m not sure why, but maybe it was because of two former Grizz alumni vs one on the Wizards: Bibby and Abdur-Rahim vs Antonio Daniels.  Bibby is still awesome and Shareef still had his shitty flat shot; the one I loathed for years cause it was so ugly and ineffective.  Daniels is so average.  I don’t know how he’s still in the league.  I still haven’t gone to an NHL game yet, but I still have tickets for the Penguins game at the end of the month.  Anybody who comes here can go with me, on da house.

I don’t get how I’ve been able to accumulate so much mail since I’ve been here.  I  guess I don’t have an excuse of the packages that I get cause I’ve been buying a tonne of stuff.  It’s like Christmas every day here.  A few weeks back, I placed an order for a garbage can from Linens-N-Things, along with some microfibre dish towels that they were clearing out.  I placed my order and a few days later, I received an e-mail that they couldn’t fulfill my order and they canceled the whole thing.  I thought that they just ran out of stock.  I was a little pissed cause I used my GoogleCheckout coupon as a new user and it was wasted as I had no way of re-using it.  Anyway, to my surprise, a week later, I received an e-mail from the mail room that I had received yet another parcel.  I wasn’t sure what it was cause I wasn’t expecting anything that day.  It turns out that it was the garbage can.  Despite the canceled order, someone still decided that I deserved to have it.  I am still waiting for the charge to appear on my credit card, but I don’t think it’s gonna happen.  I guess I still have a little luck with me out here.

I get a lot of junk mail too, but I discovered that it’s always worth it to open the bulk mail.  It doesn’t hurt to take a peek.  So I picked up my mail at the apartment and I was heading to the Metro train and I opened up an envelope.  Inside was a crisp $1 bill.  It was for some survey that they wanted people to do.  I was wondering how many people had thrown out their junk mail without even opening it.  Think of all the $1 bills that were destroyed.  How sad.  All these homeless people here and some company is just giving away free cash to residents.  It’s like a perfect example of the rich getting richer, well.. sorta. 

Speaking of free money, I was heading home yesterday and outside of the apartment, I saw a woman’s wallet on the floor.  I picked it up and brought it up to my place to check it out.  It was a black Coach wallet and in decent shape and the first thing I noticed was the $50 bill tucked away.  I went through it and noticed that the poor victim had a lot of stuff in their; her SSN card, 3 credit cards, drivers license, some medical card, and a $25 restaurant GC.  The woman lived in the same building as me and according to one of the cards, she had some implant in her ear to her hearing.  I mulled over the options and I didn’t really trust the concierge so I waited a couple of hours and I brought the wallet up to the lady.  So I’ve told this story to a few people already, and everyone (the guys) asked, ‘Was she hot?’.  She was alright.  She was happy and I felt pretty good about returning it.  Hopefully the good karma Gods will let me win the Powerball lottery.  I hear it’s like $400 M and the guys at the office all chip in a few bucks in an effort to expedite an early retirement.  After taking a lump sum and calculating taxes, I think the $400M gets whitled down to about $150 M, but that’s still not bad divded by approximately 40 people.  Cross your fingers for me.  Maybe I’ll be home sooner than I expected.  Yeah yeah, I know.. wishful thinking. 

I could use the extra money to help pay for the TV I bought too.  I ordered a 50" Philips plasma from Costco.com.  I bought it a few days before they changed their return policy and people who purchased it before that day, get grandfathered into the new policy.  Lucky me.  If I feel inclined to return it down the road, then I think I’ll be able to get my money back.  They recently changed it so boneheads couldn’t get refunds on TV after 90 days.  I think that’s fair since I’m sure they were losing hundreds of millions on returns.  I don’t think they’ve changed the policy in Canada yet, but I’m sure it’s sure to follow suit soon.  So this is fair warning to everyone at home.  Get your price adjustments or returns in before they cockblock you in your tracks.  Anyway, I cannot wait to HD TV set up.  I’ve already decided to go with Comcast as my cable and internet provider.  It’s gonna be awesome!  I will have a huge grin on my face on March 16th when it’s all set up.  PLUS, I plan on subscribing to NHL Center Ice.  It’ll be pro-rated so I’ll be able to get the final month of hockey for like $15.  And most importantly, I’ll be able to watch some Canucks games!  Oh oh oh, I almost forgot that I’ll have a DVR/PVR again next week.  Oh how I miss the PVR! Woohoo!

So next week, I’ll be moving.  I’m looking forward to it, although I still have to figure out how I am gonna move all the stuff I’ve accumulated over the past 7 weeks.  It’s a lot of stuff and I think I need to invest in a cart/hand truck to make life easier.  It’ll be worth it I guess, and I suppose if I feel like being a bastard about it, I could also return it back to Costco.  Hahaha.  I’ll probably keep it though.  I’ll have to leave here one day and it’ll come in handy.

Cya soon!
Anth