A few random photos from Vancouver, Ottawa, and Salt Spring Island

Here are a few random photos I felt like posting when I was in Canada, but which didn’t really merit posts…

Framed portrait:

Framed portrait

I glued a 1-cent stamp from 1935 onto a parcel wrapped in blank 1960s sheet music paper to give a gift to a friend:

1935 1-cent stamp

A tasty cracker manwich, with Oker in the background:

Cracker manwich

Denise’s crazy nails, which were done by a lady at Lady Orchid’s Rejuvenating Spa down on West Broadway a few doors west from Manitoba Street:

Nails looking sharp

I made strawberries stuffed with chocolate mousse and added a peppermint leaf to each one:

Strawberries stuffed with chocolate

And I also made peanut butter cup cookies. I didn’t make the peanut butter cups, though, they were in a package…

Peanut butter cup cookies

After the Vancouver Canucks won Game 5 of Round 3 of the Stanley Cup playoffs, sending them to their first Stanley Cup Final since 1994, a bunch of us went downtown to celebrate – we weren’t the only ones!

Celebrating after the Canucks Round 3, Game 5 victory

I had to go to Ottawa to get my visa for Côte d’Ivoire, and as I do on every visit to Ottawa, I took a quick walk around Parliament Hill:

Parliament Hill, Ottawa, Canada

While in Ottawa, I also visited the Canadian Museum of Nature, which has some really cool dinosaur fossils, including this triceratops skull:

Triceratops skull, Museum of Nature, Ottawa

Back in BC, my last weekend in Canada was spent with a bunch of friends on Salt Spring Island. The float plane is faster than the ferry:

Float plane en route to Salt Spring Island, BC,Canada

The trip by ferry is really beautiful, winding between loads of little islands along the way:

View from the ferry to Salt Spring Island, BC, Canada

On Saturday morning, we went to Ganges, the main town on Salt Spring Island, to have a look at the market. This busker, Mack Pinchbeck, was amaaazing!

Busking skateboard bluegrass fiddle prodigy Mack Pinchbeck in Ganges, Salt Spring Island

Later on, we headed to a dock so people could take a dip in the water. Conrad the 4-legged, 4-armed wonderboy dove right in:

Conrad, the 4-armed, 4-legged wonderboy

A Few Photos of London

After returning home to the UK from Barcelona, I only had a week left at Merlin (Medical Emergency Relief International) head office in London. This is one of the views from the office:

PhotoDiarist

We also get massive RAF Chinook helicopters flying past on occasion, and I managed to grab a couple of photos of this one as it circled several times very close to our building before flying off. I felt the building start to shake and heard a thudding noise, so I knew what was about to appear and got to the window with my camera before I could even see it:

PhotoDiarist
PhotoDiarist

A random London photo:

PhotoDiarist

On Sunday, February 28th, as planned several weeks beforehand, a bunch of people gathered at the home of my Canadian friend Aidan to watch Team Canada play in the 2010 Winter Olympics Gold Medal Hockey Game. It kicked off at 8pm UK time, and it was amazing to watch, though Aidan, Skylar, and I all had to feel a little strange being in London when we’re all BC natives and should have been in Vancouver for the game.

PhotoDiarist

I caught one of the Canadian goals on camera when it was replayed:

PhotoDiarist

After the amazing sudden-death overtime goal by Sid the Kid (have I ever mentioned I was born in Nova Scotia?), a few of us went to Trafalgar Square where we found a huge crowd of Canadians waving flags, singing out loud, and mysteriously producing free Sleeman’s Honey Brown beer, which apparently had been handed out at the Canadian embassy earlier in the day. As usual, it was a night of small world encounters as I met one girl who knows a bunch of people with whom I went to high school, then I met another girl who turned out to be a friend of Skylar’s who he hadn’t seen in a couple of years.

Sadly, my camera battery had died earlier in the night so I didn’t manage to capture any of these events on camera.

Back to Switzerland

From March 23rd to April 2nd I was out of the country (Canada) on a trip to Switzerland with 11 other UBC students for the Harvard World Model United Nations conference in Geneva. While the conference itself was poorly run and couldn’t compare to the level of the UBC Model UN in January, the trip was still very much worthwhile and a terrific experience. As usual, I took a lot of photos.

Our private plane to Seattle:

Sara made friends with tiny children on every flight

Sara also thought she lost stuff a million times, and in this case actually DID leave her iPod behind on the plane when we landed in Copenhagen (she got it back)

Once we arrived in Geneva, time to take the train into town

I got a Rolex for $10 in Thailand… works fine.

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency headquarters

International Committee of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, founded in Geneva

Just outside the Red Cross Museum, which of these things is not like the others?

Drew, Kat, and I chose to eat a cheap lunch by shopping for groceries and eating in our hotel room, and it was DELICIOUS! We’re good sandwich-makers.

We got a private visit with the International Organisation for Migration. This is the stylish waiting room.

Juan with the IOM flag. The IOM is not a UN Agency, but works with UN agencies and other humanitarian agencies. The visit was really educational and I’m seriously considering doing an internship with them during my Master’s degree, as I was really impressed by the staff members who put a lot of effort into their presentations for us.

Devon, Sara and Juan taking a break in my room.

We had a rather lacklustre visit to the dreary campus of Webster University, and the highlight of that excursion was this brochure. If you don’t understand why I think it’s funny, please ask and I will explain to you.

Sara, acting as Mom during the trip, tucks Cam into bed.

Juan and I visited a really neat museum of art and history, and this piece of armour is just his size!

The description for this one says that it is supposed to be bovine, so those horns aren’t demon-horns but cow horns, and those are little cow ears too.

The section of the museum with all the guns was really nifty. These are a couple of old school grenade launchers.

This is both a pistol AND a battle axe!

This Flemish painting from 1613 (I think) shows people clearly playing hockey. Crazy.

On our visit to the UNHCR, Juan got to try on their field staff safety gear, a bulletproof kevlar vest and helmet in UN colours. The vest weighs 11 kilos.