Checking in from the Great White North..

Some of these comments are unreal, I had no idea neighbours could be quite so ridiculous with ‘tripping hazard’ comments and so on.

Here in Ontario, the bylaw is that you clear it within 24 hours of falling, this can be tricky…as it snows alot…and you have really a small window to clear it before it freezes and is like chipping rocks.

So it’s the homeowners/renters responsibility to clear the footpath surrounding the boundaries of their property. Being that footpath is a universally standard width here…and concrete…not higgledy tarmac, it’s pretty easy. Then just salt the cleared concrete.

$1000 fine and up if you don’t.

If it’s real heavy my elderly neighbour tends to crack out his snowblower and do ours for us but usually I’ll do his if it’s light fall. Canadians are much more neighbourly..as a general rule.

p.s. I should add that so long as I clear a small path and the steps aren’t lethally icey, postie hasn’t ever complained.

Truly sickening report, worse is that it hasn’t changed from 3 years ago. Both my sister (and my mother before she retired) took fruit and packed up homemade curry, pasta and things into work when they could (both teachers) to give to some of the kids because the growling stomachs of some of the kids became too upsetting to have to listen to in the classroom.

Stoner, Bear,

Interesting analogies on the padlocks on grain silos…can I offer different explanations? I worked at Camgrain for 3 years, silos are damn dangerous places. What Stoner says about linseed is totally true, it’s like quicksand given the slipperyness of the grains. I routinely would hand sample outgoing/incoming truck loads for ergot/pests etc when our vacuum sampler would break down, but linseed…not on your nelly.

I have *never* heard of the CO build up theory, and I can’t ever recall it featuring in any safety protocol, but I can well believe it. Usually you keep the hatches locked for several reasons. 1 – Pests, 2 – Children/teenagers playing 3 – Explosion risk. Cleaning those silos (upto 5000 ton) out with quick scaffold and yard brushes was damn sketchy work at the best of times, and looking back on it, we must have been mad, but the money was good and the work physical. Respirators are an absolute must.

Also hatches are kept locked because you can get what are called ‘grain walls’ i.e. if you’re drying with aerators grain/barley in a silo, and then run what is called a ‘sweep’ to say…transfer grains to the dryers, (it’s a big auger running around a central point that sucks grain down to a chute) you can get unstable points in the pile that can collapse, i.e. the grain looks solid enough to stand on, but in reality, it’s just overly moist and there are hollows underneath that can collapse…

In short, you keep them locked as they can kill, perhaps in a silage silo you may get CO build up, but I’d be surprised in a grain silo unless it was put away very wet indeed.

Anyway, back on topic, this wood boiler stuff is epic! Keep it up 🙂

I love films, all sorts of films, but on the subject of violent ones, one and one only sticks out. It makes Old Boy look like a pantomime.

‘The Killer Inside Me’

There is a scene in that film, which if you have any ounce of humanity inside you, will make you either 1. throw up, 2. winch/want to throw up.

Hell even Stanley Kubrick called the book from which it is derived, the most depraved and deeply disconcerting thing he had ever read.

Definitely not a film any lady should ever see, the scene I describe is truly and utterly repugnant, the way the camera lingers, and the scene lasts far long than it feels it should.

What they *should* do, is show that as a scene to those 18 in college about how violence against women is a vile, disgusting act beyond imagination, that should never EVER happen. Casey Affleck makes Chris Brown look like an amateur. Truly disturbing.

Anyone who has seen this film will know exactly what and what scene I am talking about. It stays with you, like Requiem for a Dream.

i agree that the moment for a return punch has clearly evaporated.

surely the right thing to do would be to go knock on this guys house, and surprise the crap out him by suggesting he start a ‘slow down’ campaign for the kids who live on the road?

19% in a job I’ve been in 4 months, total surprise that ‘come to my office’ email was..

True of a surprising number of places. In Canada the cost of living is significantly higher than in the UK – a weekly grocery shop for 2 people costs about $150-240, or £100-150ish. Booze is more expensive, cars are more expensive (secondhand). Rent in the big cities (Toronto, Vancouver) is not significantly lower than London. Heck, even in the US the cost of living is higher than the UK, weirdly. We’re so used to it being cheaper but it isn’t true.
Fortunately tax is lower, I think, so take-home pay is better. And the quality of life makes it all worth it.

As for Canadian jobs and needing experience (someone else’s comment), how old are you?

nicko are you living in Canada? I don’t know where you’re buying your weekly shop, but you must be eating like a prince!

I’ve been in Canada getting on 4 years now, did a 2 year masters here (living well below the poverty line in one of the most poverty stricken cities in the province), am now on an incredible salary for someone who’s 25.

I’ve written about this on here before and can’t really be bothered to get into it again, but every place has its faults, there is no paradise, but if you’re young, have a sense of adventure and like the Great White North (snow, bears and wolves included) then why the hell not.

For the OP – this is from the ‘is the UK depressing’ thread

I live/work in Canada, love it, very different general attitude towards life and work, very upbeat, infact given the -40 degree weather and terrible driving they’re damn upbeat.

that said…I will always be british at heart, and would always relish an opportunity to work and live there as prosperously as I am able to in Canuck land.

media is alot smaller here in Canada, alot more to the point, and alot less ‘opinion make you feel miserable bullshit’ something I think the UK could benefit from hugely. by and large, canadians don’t sweat the small stuff, they just get on with it, but then they will also ignore the extreme poverty on some of the reserves, adiswabiskat a prime example…

do i think the uk is depressing? no. can one easily be led into thinking it is? absolutely.

if more people turned off their tellies, realised what an incredible outdoors the uk has to offer – fingells cave on Staffa anyone? or hell, the moors? I think the population as a whole would be a damn slight cheerier, similarly if the media stopped giving so much TV time to the **** idiots in parliament spouting their horseshit, it’d do everyone a world of good, likewise if more people would stand independently as councillors and MP’s and took more of a genuine interest in their immediate communities rather than secreting themselves away and never knowing ones neighbour etc.

we’re not here for long, why on earth be here miserably, make do and smile, no-one needs sky plus…

p.s. as a general observation, camerons ideas on making peoples employment terms less secure is damn right disgusting.

as in…I am British…but I live like I’m still on our beloved near-bankrupt rock…only I’m in Canada. i.e. Frugal/sensible/not wanting an audi/mcmansion..presently learning to ice skate…on my driveway 😯 in some skates the neighbour just gave me, because they buy new ones ‘every year’ :!

$3000 a month presently going towards savings, split between the Canadian equivalent of an ISA, shares, and a general (rather pants) savings account. Rent is $400, utilities around $60 (atleast my share is), food I somehow manage to keep below $200. Car is a classic that I’m restoring to sell on at profit…while teaching myself welding/general metalwork. Learning to brew my own beer. Alot of my Canuck mates are gobsmacked when they ask how little I am ‘getting by on’ I just live like a Brit…and pocket the difference, they live like they all work for Goldman Sachs…and complain they have no $$. Crazy.

I cycle to work, and am presently being paid tax free thanks to the wonders that are tax credits to the tune of what my international tuition was in Canada for the past couple of years. Opted out the university pension scheme as I’m only on a five year contract and frankly not really sure they’ll exist in 40 years when I retire! Would rather save it myself and put it where I understand it, even if I have to work a bit harder for it. Or better yet, build a small cottage by some sweet trails.

Not bad considering how indebted the rest of the Canadian population is…it’s like the UK in 2007…only worse :/

SFW?

thanks nbt!

I live/work in Canada, love it, very different general attitude towards life and work, very upbeat, infact given the -40 degree weather and terrible driving they’re damn upbeat.

that said…I will always be british at heart, and would always relish an opportunity to work and live there as prosperously as I am able to in Canuck land.

media is alot smaller here in Canada, alot more to the point, and alot less ‘opinion make you feel miserable bullshit’ something I think the UK could benefit from hugely. by and large, canadians don’t sweat the small stuff, they just get on with it, but then they will also ignore the extreme poverty on some of the reserves, adiswabiskat a prime example…

do i think the uk is depressing? no. can one easily be led into thinking it is? absolutely.

if more people turned off their tellies, realised what an incredible outdoors the uk has to offer – fingells cave on Staffa anyone? or hell, the moors? I think the population as a whole would be a damn slight cheerier, similarly if the media stopped giving so much TV time to the **** idiots in parliament spouting their horseshit, it’d do everyone a world of good, likewise if more people would stand independently as councillors and MP’s and took more of a genuine interest in their immediate communities rather than secreting themselves away and never knowing ones neighbour etc.

we’re not here for long, why on earth be here miserably, make do and smile, no-one needs sky plus…

p.s. as a general observation, camerons ideas on making peoples employment terms less secure is damn right disgusting.

http://www.retrorides.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=othrmod&action=display&thread=67389&page=1

Wasn’t there a Clarkson segment on Top Gear where the dirty cheap merc he bought went wrong and was horrendously expensive to fix? Coil packs I think it was??

If I was to get buy another car, and couldn’t cycle/walk to work like I do now, it’d be an estate with some welly. The S30 when it’s finished/I get tired of it will be sold (after having added value and made a tidy profit) to build a beastie like that below.

I’ll be honest, I’ve never ‘got’ Porsches, nor understood spending much money on a car, that said I admire that you’ve got the balls to do it!

Zulu – I can assure you…that 56 quid a week digs in Leeds during my undergrad looked nothing like the first photo….far from it. That and there was the Leeds Met undergrad murdered in his house on my street in a bungled bike theft.

Think I just recoiled in horror after reading this. http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/nov/16/young-jobseekers-work-pay-unemployment

What puzzles me most, is how the the general populace of the political spectrum seem ‘okay’ with this happening, are happy to collect their pensions…and then retire to live in the mess they’ve created. Utterly baffling.

specialknees – is it as a daily driver or as a toy?

As someone in that age bracket,I moved to Canada to both work and live, but I was in an incredibly lucky position to be able to do so (hydrology/petro-fire stuff), and somehow ended up with a project mangerial/master technician position before I’d even finished my masters on a reclamation/engineering project. Canadian friends of mine ask ‘so when are you going back’ not quite realising how good they have it. Several of them have commented that my job is relatively low paying for the field (it is), and they wouldn’t get out of bed for that kind of money (sort of the attitude graduates of earlier years in the UK had). But the experience I am getting is unbelievable and the colleagues I have are incredible. Very interesting to see the two attitudes differ from a country that has a huge resources based industry sector and one which doesn’t.

The majority of my close friends have found work within the UK although despite getting promotions, and being top of their respective classes (finance/geology/hydrology/law) none of them are exactly rolling in it, and in most cases, they seemingly have to justify their existence every 3-6 months. As for my best mate who has a first from both Leeds and an Mphil from Cambridge, I was dismayed when he skyped to ask for advice on his salary package. And that wasn’t from a smug git sense of ‘I earn more than you’ more from the ‘I know how hard you work, what goes into the work you do, and they’re paying you THAT?!’

It is my nephews (11-13 age bracket) I really fear for. Truly.

The only car in that ‘range’ I’d look at if I was buying modern would be one of these…

But for now…my S30 can sleep happily in the garage 😀

Flange and Monkey – here’s mine sleeping in the garage

Build thread here 🙂 – http://www.retrorides.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=readersrides&action=display&thread=86608&page=7

As a self professed rum connoisseur…a bottle ..or so a month…debaser – Kraken is the tits, it’s also frequently on offer here in Ontario, $23 a bottle, started drinking it several years back when I found in an obscure liquor store in Alberta. Bonza. It’s sweet, slightly spiced, lovely vanilla hint, it’s also lethal at 47%, have it with some ginger and lime and you’ll be very jolly before you know it. Sailor J’s makes a good second.

Cockspur isn’t that great from memory, I can’t remember buying it more than once. Havana clubs are great (there is one amber rum they do that I can’t find here in Canada for love or money 🙁 – I think it’s one of the Anejos? ) but generally they’re a little more expensive here anyway whereas Kraken is from the states. From a drinkability sense I find the Mount Gay too dry.

pete it should be as easy as right click and this menu pops up.

[/URL]

You might then need to go into the graph properties and the ‘plots’ and check the scaling, and things like that, if that’s off the plots often don’t show up at all.

Ignore my graph…it’s highly classififed and very scientific 😉

+1 on what zokes said, if you’re getting stuck, don’t hesistate to ask and i’ll have a go.

As a side note, if you do lots of graphing/data formatting, check out JMP the stats programme, especially look at their demo ‘graphing’ video, very hand piece of software and the drag/drop format is near on perfect for quick and dirty graphing.

right click on the graph, add new plot.

should be able to overlay the plot straight over it, although sometimes sigmaplot can be a bit finickety.

Sansa Clip +1

The first one I got I still use…4 years later, battery still runs for 10 hours plus, one about the 15th set of earphones but the same player, just keeps going, drag and drop the music.

Got given some amazon vouchers at christmas….bought another one should I ever lose this one.

Can tune into FM radio, can always use it as a USB stick, it’s survived the gym, sweat, cold, being runover, etc etc. No brainer.

Oil sands remediation – yes, I think my job is somewhat ironic..

The one part of Environment Canada that Harper (who is like GW Bush’s shadow) hasn’t lain the axe to in an effort to get the Keystone XL pipeline built. Infact if it isn’t oil sands related, you have to fight *very* hard to get the research cash to do anything but, very different to even 12 months ago.

On the other side of things, my friend who owns a used bicycle business in Hamilton, ON – they only do repairs and sell refurbished secondhand bikes that are *given* to them is absolutely booming, to the point he bought a new premises with cash and is to rent out the top two floors as loft apartments 😀

As for the rest of Canada…things aren’t nearly as rosy as the UK broadsheets make out, people have jobs yes, but my god is it all a house of cards waiting to tumble down, everything is built on credit. It’s like the UK in 2004.

Bearbells are a definitely no-no in my experience, and I think some of the literature now is saying the same thing. More like a dinner bell for a skinny bear. You want loud sharp noises (at distance) to make a bear aware of your presence without startling them and that you’re likely a threat to avoid, not tinny bells like a Morris dancer that make you sound delicious.

Bearspray, my colleagues and I do carry it, but if we were getting stalked by a black bear (which does happen, especially on cutlines – for pipelines, seismic lines and so on) I would be alot happier with my machete/bowie knife in hand and/or two bits of 2×4 to knock together to make enough racket to scare a bear off. In any event, that bear can move a damn slight quicker than you can in the same environment, however fast you can run, so you’re better off standing your ground (atleast with a black bear, with a grizzly, just hope it doesn’t feel hungry)

You can have rifles with you in the field, but frankly if a bear is stalking you and you’re distracted, you will see it i.e. close, charging, before you hear it coming, better off with a bat than a gun.

The environments I work in (Alberta Boreal) is often peatbog, very quiet underfoot for all the mosses, and with the dense black spruce there – see the last photo, the bear is walking around the berm of a well (oil) pad, you could be working feet from a bear and never know it, which is why you tend to look for the signs (scat, entrails) etc and use common sense. More scary was one site I worked on last year where a peatland was surrounded by a massive sand bar esker….covered in blueberry and saskatoon berry bushes…walking around in there in late summer with the berries out (delicious!)…I was expecting to walk into a bear at any minute.

Oh and bear bangers, from vivid experience, USELESS 🙄

Have some bears from last year.

First was likely a yearling, decided to have a go at the recycling containers SEVERAL times, bit of a retard, kept climbing rotten trees to escape when we shouted at it. The second appeared as I was having lunch sat on the bonnet of my truck, not in the slightest bit interested in me but to give you perspective, the berm it’s walking around is close to 2.5m tall. It was one big adult!

As for polar bears…a friend of mine has just moved to Paulatuk, NWT (shores of the Beaufort sea) where her boyfriend is to start teaching Science to the kids up there. They bought matching rifles before they left and have applied for a .50 licence for a hand cannon. Although being in an enclave of Inuit, they’re pretty safe.

[/URL]
[/URL]
[/URL]

just now, after reading the bullheart thread.

after reading the ‘what made you cry’ thread, some bent curiousity made me look back through to read this thread.

only a string of profanity can really describe what I really want to say, from the tosser you had to work with, to JOGLE to the mountain mayhem stuff. oh and the cancer.

words fail me, truly. you and those around you are the single most hope-giving example of dogged determination I have ever had the pleasure to read about.

digs, showers, bikes to borrow and food all on offer to you in south Ontario if you ever want to do a cross-Canada ride, hell i’d join you. there are atleast two bikeshops where my very good friends work who would sponsor you in a heartbeat. I don’t say that out of pity, I say that out of utter admiration for what you’ve achieved and will no doubt go on to achieve.

keep fighting, don’t ever give it even a chance of returning, not today, not ever.

(tears on cheeks)

mrgibbons

This isn’t one of those joke allegories that people post up is it?

Anyhow, taking it at face value your quandary seems ridiculous. You’ve purposefully trained in a degree related to the oil industry, interviewed for a job and been suitably skilled and motivated to actually get it. And the problem is what? Remediation of tailing lakes presents moral questions due to the global oil industry? That’s the lamest moral pickle I’ve ever heard. It’s not like you’ll be mining blood diamonds.

not a joke no, i formally trained in hydrology, although i found the technical aspects more enjoyable than the base science itself. working in the oilsands never came into it when i started, i was offered a masters, somehow qualified for funding so i took it, i graduated undergrad just as shit hit the fan and all my friends who graduated the year before had their graduate job offers recinded. the thing is i wasn’t motivated to apply for the job, i thought i had the worst interview ever, but they didn’t seem too bothered. it just happened that alot of my own research work in a completely unrelated topic crosses over with what they’re trying to do.

richpips – thanks, but no i’m not, but thanks again for reminding me why i rarely post on here, my sister has just lost her job after the LEA she works for was told it had lost 50% of it’s budget, and my other sister has taken on the workload of two other teachers who were ‘urged’ to take early retirement because of budget restraints. thanks for being a dick all the same.

“they built them here (in Halifax” – konabunny, they’re built in Canada…

molgrips – we didn’t actually let the guy go out and get a torx bit, we had one, just not present on the table, but he was the only one who actually recognised this, pretty much as soon as he said those words (in the garage of my friend where we build this stuff) he was offered the job and they asked if he wanted to come on a ride on a spare bike and took him to the pub

Junkyard – not me I don’t think! 🙂

..after a practical test. Three pieces of aluminium with threaded countersunk holes which join together to form a C. We put all manner of tools in front of them, screwdrivers, handsaw, flatheads, spanners, soldering irons, wood glue, allen keys, the works.

They had 3 torx screws with which to join the pieces that fit perfectly. But no torx wrench.

We realised (my buddies in the UK lamenting to me over skype at the people they had apply – all of us are under the age of 26 and by no means consider ourselves ‘experienced’ just lucky to know what we know and how to do something useful with it) he was perfect where on taking all of a minute to look through the tools, the screws, said promptly ‘I’ll be back in 40 minutes to finish the interview, I need a T-25 torx bit to assemble this part and you don’t have one’.

The lad with the design degree used wood glue, a girl with an electrical engineering degree just arranged them neatly in a line and asked ‘where was the box to put them in’ and several others tried to mash the allen keys to turn the torx screws. While we are a *teeny tiny* firm, we are at least young enough and bright enough to realise that education isn’t everything. Although it doesn’t have make one worry about what the future holds..and similarly makes me glad all those years tinkering with bikes as being potentially more useful than the degree in engineering i originally wanted…

Sorry…long post…over!

(we hope to take them on full time within the next 12 months as an equal partner with the same cut as everyone else, in our very small firm as we don’t have the time to ‘make’ the stuff, but lots to design/market it/field test)

..we did all of this off our own backs with some serious ‘garage’ engineering, innumerable favors from local firms and lots of paid in kind with beer/cycling tours/offers to guide people in Northern Canada to get this wee project off the ground…there were none of Mr.Cleggs ‘alarm clock britain bullshit project seed money’ used here!

Just how bad is it? I’m thinking of moving over to Canada (BC of course) for a while later this year as I’ve got a working holiday visa and no real job prospects here as the media industry is stupidly hard to get into unless you know someone.. in my situation will a year or two out of the country make much of a difference?

Do employers look down on people who have travelled instead of stuck it out in boring job in the UK til something more suitable came along? The way I’m seeing it is that I’ll get a similar job to that I could be doing in the UK (bar work etc) but I’d rather be doing that in a nicer country than here!

I never really wanted to go to university, I was too busy dabbling in substance abuse feeling sorry for myself…went to a state 6th form college after leaving a well known ‘prestigious’ private school…best thing which ever happened to me…lost a ton of ‘entitlement’ feelings that I’d been brought up with (believing them too!) and made some of the best friends anyone could ask for, at the same time, the teachers (never met/nor intend to meet a careers advisor) I had for geography were awesome, they and laterly myself realised I was damn good at it..suggested i took it at university (i originally wanted to be an engineer but alas…calculus…not my strong point)

ended up at a russell group uni in the north, did a geography BSc ..while there did a year abroad in canada very spur of the moment type deal…wasn’t even really sure why i did it…Met friends for life (international and Canadian) during that year, had alot of fun, a ton of tail, and having never had a ‘Gap Yah’ it gave me time to think, travel, study, and look hard at myself in the mirror. It was also a time when the exchange rate was awesome and everyone was high on property values in the UK. Came back to Canada after finishing my final year to do an MSc in Hydrology at the invite of one of the professors from the Canadian uni I’d been abroad to. I’m just finishing up now with that degree with a Canadian fiancée, a very healthy resume, job offers and able to work in some fairly incredible environments in the Great White North and get paid incredibly well for doing so.

Yes I left the UK with a TON of debt despite being the ‘last’ group to get away without top-up fees in 2005, but I’d saved pretty much everything I’d ever worked for and was financially pretty stable to be able to deal with that debt. My MSc is 100% funded (living costs, tuition, the works) by the Canadian government…but i’m British…go figure.

Do I think uni is worth it? It depends what you make of it, I was certainly late in realising this, but on the whole, yes

Was my degree worth it? I never thought it would be (I mean a degree in colouring in?) but it turned out to be the best decision I ever (accidentally) made.

Have I told my brother and sister (who experienced the UK university system some 20 years before I did) to talk to my nephews and nieces about studying overseas? Yes

Have they listened? Ofcourse not.

Do I think the teaching/quality of degree abroad is better? Yes, I think ‘oversold and undertaught’ describes British undergraduate degrees quite well, having experienced both systems, it truely is staggering we can get away with claiming a ‘world class education’ system.

I think in the future unless you’re doing hard science, medicine or law, the financial benefits are always going to be massively overstated and to some extent I can almost see university education being a ‘bubble’ in itself much like commodities or property, but then, that said, it’s frankly what you make of it that will actually get you a job, degree or no degree.

A side project that myself and some friends (in the UK) own and run producing highly scientific field equipment has just taken on someone with no degree whatsoever…everyone who applied who had engineering/design qualifications had the practical ability of a chocolate teapot, but could still list of equations and ‘design theory’ like they were their mums phone number. This guy was hired

TandemJeremy – Member

It will all end in tears.

plus 1

Athabasca, Alberta

Another Canuck runaway here although probably considerably younger than the rest of you – 3 of the past 4 years have been in Canada.

Based in Hamilton, ON (terrible reputation, but frankly after living in Leeds for 3 years, it’s tame by comparison), spend 5 months a year in Northern AB researching wildfires.

Grew up on the Suffolk/Cambridgeshire border.

While I miss being able to walk out my back door and go for a walk across the fields, I can do that here, they’re just snowier fields. I don’t think Canada is ‘better’ than the UK, it has plenty of problems of its own, but for what I do, and for the incredible friends I’ve made here, I wouldn’t have done anything differently.

Much to my siblings/parents dismay, I can’t see myself coming back.

(Said with a tinge of sadness all that to be honest, I love the UK, but I want to work, and be fiscally stable and safe, perhaps even be able to buy a house one day, sadly, despite the best of intentions, that just isn’t a possibility in the UK any time soon, nor does it seem to bother any of the political parties that I’m not alone amongst literate and numerate graduates thinking the same thing so taking themselves elsewhere.

Before anyone chirps about being workshy, I’ve done multiple 100+ hour weeks with the payslips to prove it, in borderline dangerous conditions to fund my way though my undergraduate, but I’ll be damned if I’ll do that for the rest of my life just to be able to relax when I’m dead!

for the benefit of bunnyhop and a few others…

the week before last I ventured out from a rather grim looking Hamilton (n.b. i have never felt more nervous, about anything, in my entire life, ever)

[/URL]

travelled…to the other side of the country…

[/URL]

…got given a stern talking to by some friends who live in Vancouver…and alot of Dutch courage…

got on a ferry…

[/URL]

..got to the island…and the rest is very recent history I guess…

and if you really wondered…the somewhat salty ring was produced from my wetsuit key stash…after a day having alot of fun..in some rather huge waves..

[/URL]

..you bet her answer was yes 😉

to top all of this, I have job offers for when my masters is finished in a few months, and better still, they’re not (all) in Fort McMurray!

never thought i’d say this, but it certainly has felt like i’ve been walking on crushed angels lately.
life… for once…and certainly for a good while longer.. is utterly grand 😀

the next mini adventure is over small swathes of South America, once I’ve finished some work for my supervisor in the North West Territories. mrs has work if she wants it in Argentina for four months, and i need a break before i start my real job, so a small service when we get back from that so it’s on paper, she wants to do the sensible things before any extravagent gestures like white weddings and such. and then living and working in Victoria from there on out, with lots of travel in the Yukon, BC and northern Alberta as part of the new job.

3 years ago I had finished a degree in the UK with *no* idea where I’d be in a few years time, with hindsight, I’m glad I didn’t know, as I couldn’t have written the future better if I’d tried. 🙄

the ring…was a haribo ring…(seriously!) the real one on its way to her now (disguised in a box…full of haribo rings) it was made by my best friend who i’ve known since childhood who’s a jeweller in downtown Toronto, from a number of awesome cool rocks – metal bearing rocks of copper/silver/gold/platinum that my friend fashioned into seamlessly joined segmented ring (mrs-to-be-wed is a geologist) …my friend said it was the hardest piece of jewellery she has ever had to make – she had to buy cobalt tips after the rocks blunted her tools.. and my do i now owe her.. big time, (mrs resents diamonds on principle – of them being a boring rock!)

bravohotel8er

have a read of this, http://www.singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/a-love-story-three-reasons-your-partner-was-the-one-for-you

I suspect it’ll cheer you up considerably.

As Bunnyhop stated, you will meet ‘the one’ if there is such a thing, in the most damndest or unpredictable of situations. That you can be sure of : )