So I have survived the four days of filming on the beach. It was hard, but I managed it ;o) Actually it wasn't as good as we'd expected at first, as there was rain and wind and not much sun. But yesterday the sun came out and everyone seemed to gel, as the 60 or so people we'd had previously had been reduced down to a select 30 who were considered to be good workers. There was volleyball, there was football, there was frisbee, there was a lot of eating, and there was a bit of working in there too. I lay on the grass for an hour and a half watching people play volleyball and got paid for it. So I can't complain.

As an added bonus, I got told when I signed on in the morning that I had been put "on permit" which means that they thought I was good at working and took directions well, and as a thankyou they'd put me on Union wages for the day. So instead of getting $9.50 per hour, I got around $20 per hour. Which is always good!

I also got asked for my phone number by a very cute young man, who hopefully will be phoning me some time in the next few days :o) although he lives in Maple Ridge which is about an hour and a half away, so it might be hard to see him a lot. But hey, no-one's ever asked for my number before until I've known them for months and months, so it's a whole new experience for me.

And now, on to the task of scheduling volunteers for the Sea Vancouver festival next week.... when no-one wants to work.....fun!!

Like Mike - again

So on Friday I went to the first day of filming for Like Mike 2 - which basically meant that I could spend the day hanging around in the sun eating and get paid for it. Which is always good. Filming started at 9:30am (a decent time for once) and we finished at 9:15pm, so it was quite a long day, but it was entertaining. I was in a summer dress, so it was lovely when the sun was out and slightly cold during the two minor downpours that we had during the course of the day. However Michael Jordan turned up in the morning, and Clyde (spelling?) Drexler in the afternoon, so it was nice to see them. The main child actors were entertaining if slightly annoying, and the main male actor was cute and from a dance show over here called '360' - he was also extremely amusing and we cocked up quite a lot of takes because we were laughing at him so much. Some cunning person put the Kraft services tent right next to the Extras Holding tent and kept supplying it with food, so I spent the whole day eating Strawberry laces, which were meant to be for the kids, and consuming large quantities of granola bars. It was fab. I won't fit in my bikini now though :o)

The minor problem was that despite putting Factor 50 all over me, I managed to miss a small strip across my back, which is now bright red, and strangely in the shape of the Batman symbol. Let's hope that in our bikini filming tomorrow they don't film my back. Good excuse for me to spend the day lying down on the beach....

Yesterday I went to the orientation day for the Sea Vancouver Festival to meet my volunteer crew, although not many of them came. I guess when you get an e-mail saying you're working in the Parking department, you lose heart. Although if they actually read the e-mail, they would see that we have nothing to do with parking, but whatever. I'd be pissed off too! So now I have to spend the next week ringing people, sorting out details and organising schedules for all my volunteers. It's going to be a toughie.

In other excitement, our pool is being fixed as we type!! Apparently it will be filled and cleaned next week and ready for use by the weekend. Roll on summer!!

Off to belly dancing and 'Greek Day' downtown.....

Getting busy

So it's been a manic past week, and I think the mania shows little sign of stopping. Last week at this time Christie and I went for dinner, then gelato, and then happened to notice a football match over the road, so of course we had to watch that. It was a Richmond Firefighters team against the local team, called - for some reason - Binger's Army. We sat and watched them with our gelato, and had a chat to one of the firefighters, and vowed to go again this week :o) it was like being back in England, with foul language and threats against the ref included!

Friday involved some running around and going to the bank, and some work. Saturday and Sunday saw me working at the Dragon Boat Racing festival. I was in the Racers Services tent, which meant that I was dealing out information on results, scheduling, locations and general stuff. I also then got handed the PA system and became the announcer for the races, calling the teams to the marshalling tent and making general calls for various things. It was strange to hear my English accent being broadcast across the Racers Village, when everyone else around me was speaking with a Canadian accent. People kept coming up and asking if I was the girl on the speakers. It was great fun though, and I got a chance to watch some of the races after my shifts had finished, gaining myself a nice tan in the process. I then went to belly dancing and nearly fell asleep, since my shift had started at 6:30am that morning.

Monday saw a lot of chores taking place, some cleaning of the house and some eating of pecan pie at Granville Island, followed by a trip to the cinema to see Herbie Fully Loaded (don't worry, my friend won free tickets, so we didn't pay to see it) and a trip to get Greek food afterwards. And then yesterday saw some work, a meeting with my bank manager to try and convince them to give me a credit card, a three and a half hour trip around the sites that are going to be used for the Sea Vancouver festival in a few weeks (I am the Captain of Parking Services, so I have to schedule all my volunteers in and make sure they are placed properly to welcome guests and give them information) which was interesting but slightly scary (lots of work to be done by yours truly), a quick trip home to eat and then another meeting with ESS Vancouver. And then some more work. Phew.....

This morning I am watching Wimbledon and am getting annoyed at the fact that TSN is not showing the match between Mirza and Kuznetsova, even though Mirza is ranked a hundred places under Kuznetsova, she won the second set, it seems like a royal battle and it's on Centre Court, seemingly because neither player is American and therefore it doesn't seem to matter. Instead we are watching Lindsey Davenport demolish some poor girl in a really boring match, because they are both American. I have resorted to listening to the BBC radio coverage, which is good but would be better if we had visuals. Bloody biased coverage.

This weekend promises to be another full one. This Friday and next Monday and Tuesday, I am shooting for some film which is the sequel to 'Like Mike' which apparently had Lil Bow Wow in and was some tale about a boy who finds a pair of trainers that make him play like Michael Jordan. Yeah. So the sequel is the same basic premise I think, only with another sport. We have to wear bikinis, though I know not why. I hope it's a beach shoot so we can all get tanned..... anyway, it's three days of money. Saturday brings an orientation day for the Sea Vancouver festival where I get to meet all my volunteers, Sunday brings belly dancing and work, and Monday also brings my friend's birthday and a celebratory baseball match. I hardly have time to breathe.... and yet I still can't find a decent job.....

Tiredness

Have finished volunteer weekend at the Dragon Boat Racing festival. Woke up at 4:30am this morning, very tired. Going to bed now even though it is only 9pm. Just letting you all know I am still living. More postings when not falling asleep at keyboard.....

I'm still alive....

Spent two hours at the doctors today, getting various tests done - the usual shebang plus an ECG to measure my heart rate. My dad has a hole in his heart, so I think they wanted to cover all the bases. Anyway, I'm sure nothing will show up, but it's always good to be covered just in case.

In other news, life just gets more random. Today there was a 7.0 earthquake in California, and for a few hours Vancouver was on tsunami warning. Which seemed to consist of no-one actually telling us what to do or where to go, but just the fact that we should be warned. Very useful. Anyway, if one happened it was meant to hit around 11pm, and since it's now 11:30pm, I think we're ok. The warning got cancelled a couple of hours ago, but it's scary to know that if there is an earthquake nearer to home, we might not be so lucky. I worry that my new house is too close to the sea and too low down in terms of sea level to be safe, so if there is a proper warning we're going to have to move to higher ground. I already have my route mapped out..... let's hope that Fab can cope with some serious acceleration.

And this evening, I got confirmation that I am volunteering this weekend for a Dragon Boat Racing festival. I got bored with not having any exciting jobs to do, so I just volunteered for a load of stuff. Sadly I think a couple of my shifts might start at 6:30am, but it should be a fun weekend if the weather holds up. Dragon Boat is great to watch. I am in the Racer Services tent, which apparently is great fun, so we shall see. I also have an appointment with another Extras Agency on Thursday, as my current one seems determined to not give any of us any work. Buggers.

I'm tired, so that's all folks....

A unique experience

But one that I do not wish to repeat in the near future.

I was sitting here at the computer, minding my own business, when I started to feel a little queasy. Then a lot queasy. I decided to go into the bathroom and splash water on my face, whereupon in the space of two minutes I felt very queasy indeed, started to sweat uncontrollably, lost most of my hearing and nearly all vision, lost the ability to stand up straight and finally woke up on the floor.

The reason? I have no bloody idea. But it was interesting while it lasted, if extremely scary. Answers on a postcard please.

PS My head hurts where I smacked it on the wall :o(

The Perishers and Sarah McLachlan

So I have finally been to see Sarah McLachlan, after missing her by a week when I got here in October. It was really good. The show was at GM place, which is pretty big, and we had pretty good seats up in the balcony to the left of the stage. After some wandering one way streets trying to get into a decent parking lot, we finally made it ($15 to park!! They really take the piss). The first band on were called The Perishers, and I have to admit that I had never heard of them, even though they seem to have been touring for ever. I guessed they were from Britain and Christie that they were from BC; we were both wrong. Sweden, of all places. Really good band though, I recommend them. Kind of folk/rock/unexplainable. We both bought the CD ($10, I love the price of music here) and went to get it signed, but the queue was so mega long that we had to go back to our seats for fear of missing Sarah McLachlan.

I was impatient for Sarah McLachlan to do my favourite songs, but they came one after the other near the end of the gig (Stupid - Possession - Sweet Surrender). Sadly Stupid sounded worse live than it did on CD, mainly because the drums and crashing bits weren't dramatic enough. Possession was also a disappointment, as it is meant to be just her and a piano, but for the tour they jazzed it up and made it pop-y. However, Sweet Surrender was just as good as it should have been, so one out of three ain't bad. The rest of the set was really good, and the whole thing went on for ages as it was her last show of the last tour for a while, and she comes from BC. There was an encore and then people started leaving, but us cunning buggers noted that the lights hadn't come back on yet and stayed in our seats. And then lo and behold, she came back out for one more song. Cue a lot of silly people trying to get back into the arena after realising the show wasn't over :o)

Today the weather is actually good, with blue sky and sun. In honour of this, I made myself a fab salad after going to Granville Island and loading up with fresh stuff, including nectarines, mmmmm. So now of course I am going to go and buy myself a big fat doughnut to make up for the lack of crap in my diet. See ya!

Highlights of Speaker's Corner

City TV has this thing here called Speaker's Corner. There are a couple of filming booths located in downtown Vancouver, where you can go and stick a dollar in and get something like 30 seconds on camera. One is in a shopping mall, one on the street and one somewhere else. They have a segment every day where they play back the messages that they have recorded, and most of them are just people being geeky or young kids mouthing off about shopping or dating. But today there was a funny one, and a not so funny one.

Segment number one: drunken English guy on the street at some obscene hour of the morning. "I just want to say to all those guys out there who have girlfriends who are smart, attractive, cool, really wonderful - hang onto them. Don't sit on the fence and wait for something to happen, get out there and tell them how you feel. Otherwise you might find yourself alone and pissed, talking to a camera on the street at 2am, which would be bloody ridiculous."

Segment number two: a youngish guy, again on the street in the middle of the night, obviously homeless. "I just wanted to come on this and tell my daughter, who I haven't seen for four years, how much I love her and think about her. I want you to know that I've never stopped thinking about you, and that your daddy's going through a rough patch right now, but that someday, I will be back in your life. So Naomi, I love you and I promise to see you soon."

And that really got to me, that this guy who probably doesn't have ten bucks in the world, actually put a dollar into a camera in the middle of the night to record a message for his daughter, because he didn't have anyone else to tell. It certainly made me think about things.

I gave in

And bought a new tv. I just couldn't cope with the pinkness of the tv I got for free off someone any more. It wasn't too bad until I was watching the baseball, when the fact that the field was pink made me feel like I was on drugs. You don't realise how many things on tv are green until you can't see green any more! And today when I was watching CSI and the screen was so dark I couldn't see anything, plus the sound was so bad that I couldn't work out what they were doing, I knew it was time to visit Future Shop.

It's been a while since I saved my pocket money to buy my first tv, and sent my dad out with the only £100 I had in the world, tasking him to buy me one. The only one he could find was a 14" one, being sold at £100 because it was the display model. Today, however, I came away with a 20" tv for $135, or £60. How times have changed....

So although it doesn't look as impressive as the free one, being an unknown manufacturer rather than Toshiba, I can actually see the green green grass of home now :o)

The cable man cometh

And cable is restored, hoorah! Now I just have to cope with the fact that my tv is pink (I think one of the tubes has gone) so everything is in various shades of pink and maroon. Which is more disturbing than I thought it would be. I guess I have the option of black and white, but it's just not as good. Especially if you ever want to watch snooker. I can't really complain, since it is big and free, but I will probably buy one at some point. At least now when Wimbledon comes on I can wake up at 3am and watch some matches!

It's still raining here. However my social life seems to be good, better than I thought it would be after Denise left. How sad that I made all my friends except one through Denise - although I guess it was to be expected with my lack of outside job. I hereby apologise to her for any neediness displayed over the past few months......... this week brings a pot luck party, a gig at Granville Island with some band that Sunshine chatted up at the airport a few months ago, bellydancing and a Sarah McLachlan concert. And a lot of work, boring work, but it pays. I also signed up as a volunteer for the Sea Vancouver festival in July, since I had nothing else to do. I'm trying to persuade them to give me a paid position, so cross fingers.

Today I fought off fake e-mails from both Ebay and PayPal, so it was an interesting day. Both were forwarded to the actual companies, who then sent me e-mails back saying they were nothing to do with them, and that they had in turn forwarded them on to some law enforcement agency or other. Usually I just delete them, but for some reason I was being proactive today. It is rare.

I have a stomach ache, so I am going to curl up and feel sorry for myself, then watch Jeopardy. Because I can!!!

P.S. Ticketmaster Canada just sent me an e-mail, announcing Tom Jones' presence here next week at GM Place. And for a moment, I was tempted to go and have a good laugh. But then at $70, not that tempted. Sorry Tom.

A quick poll

So, this came up in conversation last night, and there was some dissent in the ranks. So I put it to you, the readers; when you get someone in your bedroom and things start getting a little.....heated, do you leave the lights on, or turn most of them off? On one side, two of us arguing for turning them off totally or very nearly, and on the other, one person arguing for leaving them on, "So you can see what you're doing." Both sides looked in amazement at the other when this topic came up, neither side quite believing that the other side did the opposite to what they thought was convention. So I ask you all, lights on, or lights off?

Star Wars

I gave in and went to see it last night at the Oakridge Centre. It was one of those evenings where you need the company of other people, but you can't be arsed to talk to any of them - the cinema is the perfect solution. I spent the day chasing bits of furniture with Christie at Ikea and then constructing them, scoffing ice cream sundaes and marvelling the fact that the car made it home with all our purchases. So in the evening I drove out to the cinema at 10pm and went to see Episode III.

What can I say? I'm not a big fan of the first (second?) trilogy, since I think the original three were vastly superior in almost every way, but this third episode redeemed itself after the crapness of the first and second episodes at least. The love story was slightly less sketchy, and although the first twenty/thirty minutes bored me half to death, when Anakin finally gave in and became Darth Vader things got much better. And thank god we finally found out why the hell Yoda spends his life hiding in a small crappy swamp before Luke Skywalker comes along. Hayden Christiansen seems to have morphed into a pretty good looking bloke now (how young is he, am I cradle snatching?) and he seemed to be more comfortable with this lot of acting than he was in Episode II. All in all, it was a decent way to spend an evening.

Today it's raining like a bugger, I haven't done any work, and I have just bought some cinnamon buns from the IGA. At least I now have all the furniture I need! And we have belly dancing later :o) always good for injecting a bit of mystique into your life....

A final note: the guy next door gets bonus points for putting on "Two Steps Behind" on repeat and working out how to play it on his guitar, singing along as he went. I don't think he knew I was singing to it as well in my room!

My housemates

I've decided that I like the guy in the room next to mine. Not only does he play the guitar and sing, he currently has Def Leppard's greatest hits on..........

Rashness

So over the past two days I've had some hideous rash that's slowly been creeping up my body, and is now covering my neck. It kind of itches, but I feel fine otherwise (well, other than last night's stomach ache after going to Surrey, meeting Sunshine and eating far too many stuffed mushrooms with crab and cream cheese). If it starts to blight my face I may well run screaming to the doctors, but otherwise I just assume it's an allergic reaction to something and ignore it.

After being passed the music baton by Dan earlier, I realised that my music collection is piss poor compared to other people's (in part due to the fact that I couldn't be bothered to record all my albums onto the computer before I left England) so I am asking for suggestions of bands/people that my readers would recommend to me, so I can broaden my horizons a bit. Denise introduced me to the Arcade Fire, Death Cab For Cutie, Tegan and Sara and The Postal Service over the past few months; Dan was responsible for The Shins; I have MTV to thank for Switchfoot, I discovered The Music are pretty good and I randomly got more Ben Folds Five, Ryan Adams, Five For Fighting, Embrace and John Mayer songs than I had before. I also accidentally downloaded a Nik Kershaw song from many moons back, but that's another story.

So - suggestions please. I have often been described as having "eclectic" music taste (so basically I have lots of good stuff and lots of crap stuff) so anything you suggest (unless it's that band that eats birds and pukes on stage, who wear masks and whose name I can never remember) will probably be suitable. Give this girl a better music collection!!