This is the morning after the house party the night before. This is Vancouver.
Two significant things have happened in the last couple of days. First the Olympics finished. It was crazy here for 17 days, there were people everywhere and there was a great vibe about the place, in particular on the days Canada won a gold. People would pack the streets and party well in to the early hours. All the main streets would be a sea of red and white high fiving and whooping but the bell rang and everyone has gone home.
Significant thing too is we have acquired a set of shelves so our bed room no longer looks like the room of a junkie.
Just because we packed up everything we owed and journeyed through wildest Mongolia does not mean I have found a new unmaterlistic state of being.
I have not smashed my Iphone and tye'dy shirt, but its quite refreshing not having a lot of stuff. We arrived in Vancouver from Hong Kong with just our rucksacks and instantly started acquiring more stuff.
Before we left London we packed a case to send to Canada but in the chaos of leaving our lives the contents of the case did not get a lot of thought. I packed a lot of really smart shirts, dinner out type but not going to the office type, but no smart shoes. Davina packed two pairs of smart wedding typed sandals but again no shoes that would work for work.
After months of looking like travelers, wearing Tshirts, trekking trainers and quick-drying trousers, everything fitting in our small packs. I was very ready to look a little smarter, wear a shirt and jeans. Looking for work wearing trainers is not the best look.
So we start to acquire stuff. We got Davina the cheapest pair of smart-ish black shoes and a black winter coat. I get a nice pair of jeans and a shirt. The next day we both get work. Davina in a shop that sells clothes for travelers so she can literally wear what we arrived in and me with a lighting company where a shirt looks out of place even on the boss.
Landing in Vancouver was just like getting home from a beach holiday. We left exotic and sunny Hong Kong and arrived in a dark, cold and rainy Vancouver where the Holiday was over.
First we stayed for a few nights with a great couple we met via 'Couch Surfing', CS is a bit like a platonic one-night-stand via Internet dating. You have a profile on the website which tells all about you, like a dating website. You search for people that you have stuff in common with in your area, like Internet dating. Then you stay on their couch for free....like Internet dating??
Really its a world wide community. You offer your couch or spare room to travelers, which they sleep on. Then when you travel you stay on other peoples couches.
Currently there are 1,677,566 couch surfers with people offering couches in every town and city all over the world. The idea is not only a free place to sleep but a community to come together to exchange ideas, friendship and cultural exchange. We found Pat and Katlin via CS and they kindly offered us a room for our first three nights in Vancouver and they continue to be good friends which we make ice cream and drink beer in pubs that don't have TVs in. Next we moved into a long term guest house for a month while looking for somewhere a little more permanent and it was via Couch Surfing we found a french couple who had a room in their flat. Gex and Millie did the same as us. Packed up everything, gave up their jobs and moved to Vancouver. We also live with Bree, a girl from Perth. The flat is a long way from luxury, unfurnished and bland but its not about the flat. We looked at about million different flats, some rooms in over crowed houses, some basement flats that look like a set from a terrorist public relation film and some rather nice self contained perfect little flats. After I started to justify the expensive rent on a couple of nice places, Davina reminded me what we were here to do and it was not to live upto our means and alone even if the decor was nice. We are here to met new people, experience Vancouver and ideally save money.
It was this moment that Gex and Millie posted on Couch surfing about their flat. The rent is the cheapest we found, the people are the best and we plan to have couch surfers stay with us.
All the furniture was found on free-cycle websites or from charity shops. But our room was almost completely empty. We just have a boxspring with a mattress on the floor and our suitcase. Looks a little like the room of a heroin addict that has sold everything for just one more hit and oh how I crave stuff.
I want a bed that's not on the floor, then I would need a bedside table to put some stuff on. I expect that I would need a bedside lamp so I can see what ever is on my bedside table. Once I have the lamp I better get a picture or painting to put on the stark walls that are now illuminated by the bedside lamp on my bedside table next to my real bed. Tell you what would look good under a picture on the wall would be a set of draws, here we could put some nice little things, bits of stuff
But we do now have a set of shelves, a nice ikea type flat pack that we got for free and I put some photos up on the wall so it now looks like we don't have some crack habit and live in nice room.
A nice Canadian shared a with video with me when we were in China and I was reminded of it this morning.
Someones trash is someone Else's treasure
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
No comments:
Post a Comment