Banff at night.

These are some night shots of Banff that I took a few days ago. It was snowing pretty heavily, but it's only appropriate I think.


Banff downtown.


Random house with random scary red light.


Lights at the bottom of Tunnel Mountain. I've lost count of how many times I've walked up and down this little mountain.


Tunnel Mountain continued...


Ground-lamp thingy surrounded by snow.


As a side note (mainly so that I don't forget) this was on the same night as staff-only, midnight viewing session of Cloverfield, just another perks of working at the cinema! By the way, not to spoil the movie or anything but Dumbledore dies.


Spot-the-campbell game.


A cool shot of Cam, who accompanied me on my night-shooting expedition.

I'm going to do this again on a clear night.

After work today, Josh pointed out how we seemed to have adpated completely to our Banff lifestyle. We've gotten into a comfortable living pattern of waking up, skiing and going to work on days we have work. Which is good in many ways, but I'd better make sure not to let my remaining days in Canada fly by aimlessly.

Jin.

Josh Blogs!

Ok, so I have finally gotten around to doing my first blog. Was it worth the wait? Probably not. Anyway, so here goes:

On Tuesday, Golden and I decided to make the trip up to Calgary - I needed to get my shoulder checked by my Auntie (I possibly have a hairline fracture in it after battling a sleuth of grizzlies), and Golden needed to buy some underwear to add to his current collection.....of two (someone stole the rest out of the dryer at the YWCA - who does that?).

We got up bright and early and caught the Greyhound bus. Unfortunately I wasn't awake enough to remember to take photos at this point. But don't worry, I expertly photshopped an excellent representation of how it looked.

(Picture to scale.....they just have really small buses in Canada)

So, first things first. We did some a little shopping at Sears.

We then took a leisurely stroll around the city. That's the Calgary Tower in the background. And if you look closely you can see down the end of the carpark a police car which we didn't realise was in the photo at the time. On closer inspection two guys were getting arrested - ahhh what a lovely city.

Anyway, as you can see, our trip to Calgary was fast becoming boring, and you're probably thinking "for the love of God, don't let Josh post again". So to make this trip (and blog) a little more interesting, Golden and I decided we needed......an adventure!

As many of you know, we quite regularly frequent the fine restuarant Nando's up in the Ivanhoe shops. We had previously been told there was one Nando's in Calgary, so we set about to find it.

Golden checked out the map to help find the best way to get there.

He decided it would be fastest by cheetah.

As you can see, it turned out the cheetah was more interested in Golden's neck. But this kind man was nice enough to give us a ride.

At this point of the story I fell asleep and woke up in this spiffy new suit and hat, Golden had somehow regrown a neck and gotten us a car (apparently the deal for the day was rent a car and get one free Neil Patrick Harris).

Luckily for us our buddy Neil knew where Nando's was, so without further ado, I present:






Looked slightly more up-market than our Nando's at home. Much nicer inside.



Mmm YUM! One of the best meals I've had in Canada - mine was the two on the left.

How would I compare it you ask? Welllllll it was gooooood, but not quite the same. The bun was more like a tougher roll, and it didn't quite have the melt in your mouth deliciousness.




Ok, Ok, so maybe our story wasn't that cool, I guess we only really caught a train, waited at a shopping centre, got picked up by my auntie and got driven to nando's:




Oh but we are quite the bargain hunters, we went to the $1 shop and bought all this stuff for $16:


A few more random photos on the way back to the bus terminal:




All in all it was a fun day. The Nando's definitely made it worth it (oh and by the way I didn't end up getting my shoulder checked by my Auntie, I spent the whole time with her eating Nando's and then she had to go to work). Ahh well, what's medical attention when there's a delicious burger to eat.





JOSH

Sunshine Village.

Is the second mountain I'm going to introduce to you guys on this blog. Sunshine Village is a beautiful ski resort that's about 20-minute bus drive away from the town of Banff. It's smaller than Lake Louise, but it's also higher above the sea level, and perhaps that's why there's better snow in Sunshine Village at the moment. I suppose the main attraction of the mountain for me is the fact that you can pretty much make your own way down any run, through the trees and on soft, powder snow.

Here are some photos of Sunshine when we went skiing a few days ago.

The boys, Preparing for their 20-minute gondola ride to the main village. Too many skiiers in the group, I think.

The line-up for the gondola. It was a busy day.

Inside the said gondola. It was a pretty cold morning and Heathy was clever enough to put on his balaclava.

Gondola door.

Picture of the gondola station (?).

The Day lodge where we usually get our healthy lunch consisting of burger and fries.

Everyone's keen to get their day of riding started.

Check out the adorable ski-baby in the centre.

Top of Angel Express chair lift. It was pretty foggy in the morning, but it cleared up in the afternoon.

View from the top.

Michael and Cam enjoying their day. They've been improving at a rapid rate.

More shots from the chairlift.

View from the top 2.

A group of boarders readying for their ride down the mountain.

Josh making a rare appearance on the blog, he has been quite elusive lately.

I'm loving everything about this mountain; fresh snow, smooth runs, and how you can ski-out all the way down to where you catch the bus. I'm looking forward to going back there soon.

Jin

Christmas 2007.

Turned out to be fairly tame. The cinema crew had the day off, while the Earl's boys were rostered on. And with Josh gone off to Calgary to spend his christmas with his brother and cousins, Cam and I spent the afternoon by ourselves.


This is where I spent my Christmas afternoon, practicing jumps on the shown tabletop. There's something so calming about being away from people and being surrounded by powder snow.

Anywho, we decided to head out to Earl's for dinner that night, as if Golden and Heathy hadn't had enough of the place already. It must've been the cheap beers and discounted meals. It turned out to be a good move though, as Heathy and Golden managed to get all six of us into the place eventhough it was quite packed.

Photo of my Christmas eve dinner.


Campbell not posing at all.


Golden smiling awkwardly at the camera.


Heathy and I being our natural handsome selves.


The man in the centre is Francis, a French-Canadian (from Montreal) who stayed with us at the YWCA for a while. We'll talk more about him later, but this was his first night in Banff. And he got to spend it with us. The poor bloke.


A poorly taken photo (by whoelse but Sanor Michael) of myself and comrade Jae. He is now our roommate at the Tunnel Mountain Resort (TMR)! More on him later also.

Here are some photos of the food;

Cam's Quesadilla.


My seafood penne. YUM.


Golden's shit on a plate, I mean prime ribs with potato salad.

We had few drinks there, and had some more when we got back our dorm room back at the Y, and that was about it for our Christmas.

Unfortunately Josh being away at Calgary and draining (and also being a lanky bastard; muttered angrily by Golden as I am typing this,) our plans to Kris Kringle this year was abandoned. So noone ended up with presents this Christmas.

That's about it, and here are some more photos from the night.

Jin