Animals of Vancouver

Apologies for my blogging and commenting absence for the past few weeks, I have been (and still am) on holiday in Canada. I'm currently in Montréal, which feels a bit like home now, but I have just returned from a week away in Vancouver. I have previously blogged about the animals in Brittany, so I thought I'd blog about some of the animals we saw in Vancouver.

One of the main things I wanted to do in Vancouver was go whale-watching. We went with a company called Prince of Whales. However, although they did find us some killer whales (see pic below) I was quite disappointed as they spent a while trying to find the whales, and as soon as they did and we started getting good pictures, they decided to move the boat on. In fact, when we got really close, my camera battery died so I missed the opportunity. We saw three transient killer whales, but no large pod of resident orcas, and nothing else (such as bald eagles or porpoises like they said we would). Most of the boat trip was spent travelling through thick fog. However, at least we got to see a couple of wild whales. It was very exciting when they came out of the water.

We also saw beluga whales at the Vancouver Acquarium in Stanley Park. Not as exciting obviously as seeing whales in the wild, but fun nevertheless. The mother recently had a calf (2 months old) and her mother had also recently had a calf (14 months old) to the same father! So beluga society is quite strange. The beluga calfs are really cute; they are grey until they grow into beautiful white adult belugas.
Also, although we didn't see any bald eagles, we did see some at an eagle show, and there are also 170 painted eagles around the Vancouver area to celebrate the Vancouver Winter Olympics, which will be held in Feb 2010. The statues will be auctioned off after the Olympics for charity.

We also went up a mountain to the north of Vancouver called 'Grouse Mountain' in a cable car, where there were some orphan grizzly bears in a large enclosure. They were gentle giants, and we could get really close to them.
We also saw some wild deer on the mountain (mother and fawn).

Finally, yesterday we happened to see a seagull eating a large starfish! He swallowed it down whole.

Schadenfreude

It is nearly two years since I got married. I cannot believe how quickly time flies.

I had the most fantastic wedding day, yet the immediate time after I got married was very difficult. We didn't go on honeymoon (and still haven't actually). My parents moved away. Neither VH nor I had a job. VH didn't have a visa, so we had to go through the stress of the visa application. We were lodging with a couple, which wasn't fun. I had to temp for two months in order for VH to get his visa, and my colleguges there were really nasty.

Then, VH got a job! I left my temping job and the place we were temporarily lodging in :-) but we had to make a fast quick to the town VH's new company was based in. As we didn't have a home we had to live in B&B's. It was very expensive living in B&Bs and having to eat out every night, and we were draining money. They were not even nice B&B's, it was like living in someone else's house, paying, yet not feeling at home, as we couldn't use the washing machine/kitchen etc. We were, technically, homeless.

At last, we were able to move into our flat where we still live. We put loads of money into moving into the flat, and agreed to a six-month minimum contract. Six weeks later, just after Christmas 2008 VH lost his job, for no reason. The company seemed to hire employees and 'let them go' at will. So neither of us had a job, yet were trapped in this expensive contract. This was around the time I started blogging...

Anyway, the reason I have become so reflective about this is because I have been waiting for something bad to happen to this evil company. This week, the happy day came, most likely due to a lot of disgruntled ex-employees including third world country workers. An investigation by the BBC revealed the company's dirty secret. The company is making a loss, and employees are currenly being paid in shares now rather than cash. Hopefully it is not much longer before the company spins out of control, crashes, and burns.... schadenfreude.