What's new from BC Brit

HNIC theme under threat

I’m most likely the last person in Canada to post something about the Hockey Night in Canada (HNIC) theme being under threat [gam]. To be honest I wondered what all the fuss was about, it’s only the theme music to a sports show after all. I didn’t think Canadians got particularly agitated about anything, but...Continue reading

British Cars at Van Dusen

It’s been a holiday weekend in BC as we celebrate the birthday of Queen Victoria (born May 24 1819), the monarch on the throne when BC became a Province of Canada. Now in it’s 23rd year, a show featuring British cars is held at the VanDusen Botanical Gardens on the Saturday of the long weekend....Continue reading

New wheels, old wheels

When we bought our first car here it was clear that new tyres would be needed on the front of the car fairly soon. The great day arrived and it was one of shock and awe. Okay, the Focus had after market rims fitted, however, I really wasn’t expecting replacement tyres to require a mortgage...Continue reading

Why I miss European car design

I really don’t need to add any text here. The ‘car’ in question is the Pontiac Aztek and I feel it embodies everything bad in US car design. In fact, Time magazine placed the Aztek in their worst 50 cars of all time. An honour richly deserved. Stirs the emotions eh!  Continue reading

Keynote un-musings from Northern Voice

Where to start? As I’d previously mentioned I’ve adopted WordPress as my platform of choice for this blog and today the founding developer of this open source application, Matt Mullenweg [wiki], gave the conference key note. Okay, I don’t mind admitting that I knew nothing about Matt other than his WordPress and Akismet achievements so...Continue reading

Getting a better Northern Voice

Come the afternoon, come more sessions. Although I’m fairly well read in some areas, wiki’s are still an area that, if not a black art, are still unfamiliar. What better way to start to plug the gap than by checking out wiki101 with Stewart Mader. This was a really useful session as it opened up...Continue reading

Learning to fly – Northern Voice 08

One great thing about being in BC is the easy access to events that would really bypass sleepy Kent back in the UK. Today was my introduction to Northern Voice, a 2 day blogging/social media event, held out at UBC. If I’m honest, the journey took as long as it would have taken to get...Continue reading

Dasani – doing well

You may remember, back in 2004, the launch of a new, high quality bottled water, Dasani. It was launched in the UK by Coca Cola amid a £7 million marketing push. Unfortunately for Coke, it was discovered that this top quality, pure bottled water was pretty much nothing other than Sidcup tap water, originating from...Continue reading

On the street today

One of the real positives of this relocation has been my ability to re-start my enjoyment of getting out to see live music. My recent post, Jam Today, starts to capture some of my enthusiasm for live music. Back in days of yore, my best year was 1980 when I managed 24 gigs, mainly punk...Continue reading

What's new from BC Brit

Editors at Richards

When I found out that Editors were playing Richards on Richards I decided that it had to be my first gig in Vancouver. Through John Bollwitt’s PodCast, RadioZoom I felt I knew Richards before even setting foot in the place. What I wasn’t prepared for was the somewhat different experience. First shock was ‘no minors’,...Continue reading

Testing the healthcare service

We hadn’t intended to test the healthcare service until we were covered by BC Medical Services Plan (MSP), which has a 3 month from month of landing qualification period. Maybe we should have know better when the lads bought rollerblades within the first week of arrival. The short version is this. I ended up at...Continue reading

Hotels and suitcases

Don’t live out of suitcases, particularly when there’s 7 cases to choose from. It’s as simple as that. The first few days after arrival were mentally and physically draining. After the best part of 16 years of stability in the same house, living out of suitcases across 2 hotels was a slog. Why 2 hotels?...Continue reading

First thoughts

In her blog, Lesley neatly summarised the testing, first few hours of our departure from the UK, and it certainly was a test of how calm we could remain. Delays in Maidstone, delays on the M25 and a fire alarm at Gatwick were all thrown at us, but the feeling was that it would take...Continue reading

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