If you can help it, stay away from GE home appliances. I speak from experience when I tell you that they are noisy as hell! The appliances in the suite here are GE and easily mistaken for a herd of stampeding elephants: the refrigerator motor rumbles away day and night, and the dishwasher sounds more like an automatic car wash! The sales associate at Hudson Bay confirmed this for us, saying that the GE models were the noisiest models of all — bar anything the Soviets made.

You know how fast-food delivery places can stiff you with small portions? Not so with Boston Pizza. In fact, they almost give you too much. One order of spaghetti and meatballs (plus a few extra meatballs) is easily enough of an entree for three people; beef lasagna serves two; chicken and mushroom fettucine does three; medium ribs and garlic mashed potatoes are good for one (although I didn’t really enjoy the ribs). That’s enough food for nine people! I’ll know better next time.

If you’re feeling a little peckish, Earl’s has something to offer. The ice tea may be a little watered down, but the ‘scenery’ certainly isn’t! Watch yourself though, a painful shade of tomato red on your arms, face, and neck, including half a sunglass tan is complimentary with every lingering, view-admiring lunch out on the 16th Ave NW terrace. If it’s only the food you’re after, I recommend the ‘Vietnamese beef satays’: tasty!

Last night I went with some friends who wanted to see Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. Being a Tuesday things were a little more packed than usual (tickets are $8 instead of $12 on Tuesdays), which wasn’t so bad given that there were even more cute girls to take note of, but it did mean we had to try two theatres before finding seats.

There was nothing mind-blowing about the film, just the usual guns, explosions, wrecked cars, and cybernetics. Apart from a somewhat sensous Kristanna Loken, and Arnie’s comic one-liners, there was little to see. The crane chase scene is as close as T3 gets to having something to brag about, but even that left me little more than underwhelmed. Another stinker was the the TX doesn’t come off as being nearly as mean, or tenacious, as Robert Patrick was when he played the T-1000.

The closing scene is more like a home video of a highschool play, with poor and amateurish acting from Stahl and Danes — the result of a dry script. predicatble. The ending is especially weak, and philosophically sappy, leaving you bored, un-’wowed’, and in no doubt whatsoever that a ‘T4’ is on the cards. Peppered with what seems to be mid-1990s special effects, Rise of the Machines is little more than a 10-minute re-hash dragged out over 2 hours. Give us something new dammnit!

So here I am, officially a landed resident of the province of Alberta, Canada, enjoying the sights, sounds, and tastes of Calgary… Yehaw! Unlike Chris, sorry pal, my travel plans went without a hitch, and I arrived mid-afternoon-ish on Monday. It’s an incredible sight when the plane banks to descend and the cool, sleek lines of the city skyline are cast against a backdrop of rugged, snow-capped peaks — the Canadian Rockies.

Most of my official business has been taken care of from my side, it’s now up to the federal government to post my PR card and SIN number to me. This week is dedicated to house-hunting, and we’re headed out with the realtor this morning. I did a silly thing when I turned in my US driving license for a probationary license in return — I should have waited another 2 months, and then I could have received my GDL straight-up — but what’s done is done.

The Marriott Residence Inn doesn’t have a business center, hence the delay in my posting. The hotel does, however, provide complimentary broadband access in-room. With that in mind I picked up a Compaq 2170CA Notebooke for a reasonable price at FutureShop, slapped in an extra 256MB RAM and was good to go. It’s not exactly cutting edge, but it will do nicely for a mobile solution in-and-around College and for travel/trips once I’ve tricked it out with a wi-fi card, and ditch XP Home edition.

I’ve taken a couple of photos so far, but not many because I’ve been saving the batteries. When using the battery charger with a socket adapter and the European 240V convertor, the lights on the charger flash on and off at an incredible rate, most likely indicating that the current coming out the convertor isn’t quite steady; which I’m sure isn’t great for the health of the batteries. The North American adapter for my battery charger is still lying in my US apt, so I reckon that once the current charge of the batteries is spent, there’ll be no more picture-taking. I’ve been wanting a new camera for a while though, and suspect that I will order the Canon G3, and some kit, later today. I thought I’d hold out for a Canon 10D, but even if I can afford the body I don’t have the $$$ lying around for any L-series lenses.

Oh, did I mention I love it here?!!

It’s been a hectic week. The house is about 75% empty, with all our stuff boxed and crated downstairs waiting for the final word before it gets cargoed off to the land of maple syrup. I packed my luggage on Friday, so there won’t be a mad dash at the last minute in rush to cram the bags full, well beyond their carring capacity, with those forgotten items that always seem to resurface just as it’s time to depart for the airport.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get around to doing everything that I had intended this week. To those of you I didn’t get round to seeing, we’ll have to catch up on that beer some other time. Chris, I’m afraid the splendour of Bucharest Decadence will have to wait for another time too.

This isn’t my farewell to Romania, as expect that I will still visit at some point within the next two years, but my centre of gravity has most definitely shifted westwards. To all those I leave behind, thank you for our gracious hospitality, and your unending support and friendship. Life here has certainly been an unforgettable ‘experience’!

As you can imagine, I expect to be quite busy once I get to Canada, with all kinds of ‘official’ shennanigans to take care of. As long as the Calgary’s Marriot Residence Inn has a connection though, I should be able to recount life as a new ‘Canadian’ until we get set up in a pad of our own. I look forward to posting from the other side!

In the process of testing out the FeedDemon beta I realized that I hadn’t updated the sidebar links to my RSS feed when I moved hosts earlier this year. Fixed it, not that I expect it to get much use anyway.

At last! I have my monitor back. Damn it’s good to be back amongst the living!! It only took 15 days, 5 days longer than the maximum period stipulated in the guarantee, and 15 days longer than it should have taken — but who cares right? Normally I wouldn’t have stood for it, but there’s really no way to get results here. Bureaucracy is king here, and afford everyone the opportunity of hiding behind the system.

I owe a bunch of you folks some e-mail (Mike, Noha, Scott, Lynn, and others). I’m getting to it, I swear.

A week from now, the packers will be here to start bundling up all our furniture and everything else that doesn’t fit in our suitcases. Nine more days and I’m off to Canada. Yeah!