Tag: engels

Introduction
Time for another update again. We’ll try and make some updates in English every now and then as well, because otherwise our foreign guests only get to look at pictures without the story behind some of the pictures. It may seem I (Bas) am doing a lot of the work on the website, which is indeed a tad bit the case, because Judith has been pretty busy on work for Talaria Communications. So we do discuss what to put on, but I get to write all the stuff, but as soons as she has more time Judith will add some stories to our weblog as well. And a last general issue: If you have problems watching our photos, check the post “About watching photos”, below this update.

Tuesday August 18
Judith did a lot of work on a translation job. She also went to do the groceries and managed to make a nice photo of the “Donair” place. We were puzzled by it on our first day when Judith had a “Donair pizza” with “Donair sauce”, which supposedly was sweet. We of course know Döner (kebab) in the Netherlands and we figure this should be the English / Canadian way of spelling it.
The Dutch / Germans and the rest of Europe may be spelling it wrong as well of course (we don’t use the arabic writing either), but somehow I have more doubts with this Canadian way of spelling it. I keep thinking “We thank you for flying with Don-Air” and “You thought Nike Air was cool, now try Don Air, they rock even more!” And of course we have garlic saus and / or “scherpsaus” with it. :-). The Canadian Donair sauce to me tasted like Vietnamese springroll sauce, which of course is very good as well. 🙂 We definitely need to go there some day to taste a Dürum Döner Kebab, or whatever equivalent they have of that.
To go on on the different way of spelling / saying things, we knew the cheeses from “La Vache qui rit”. Suprisingly, in this bi-langual country these cheeses are from “The Laughing Cow”. Most probably the English Canadians won’t buy it otherwise, since they may think it’s from those (presumed arrogant) Quebecois.
I went to the schoolbaord of the Yellowknife Education District #1 and to the Yellowknife Catholic School Board. Goal: acquire information and application packages to work there as a substitute teacher. This seems to be the solution to stay in Canada and get a job. Subs are used a lot. The eyes of the woman behind the desk at the Catholic Schoolnoard even began to shine when I mentioned I actually had a Bachelor of Education and 7 years of teaching experience. They still needed some subs and later on we heard that a lot of subs used didn’t even have any degree in education.

Wednesday August 19
I started out with getting all the forms needed for a Dutch Criminal Records Check and to apply for a visa. I chatted with a cleric at the municipality of Groningen. Ank (my sister) even made a phone call to them later on, but we managed to get all the information we needed.
It all takes a lot of time and one gets into a lot of Chicken-Egg paradoxes. For the sort of visa I wanted to apply for you need a valid job offer, but to get a valid job offer I needed a Scoial Insurance Number, which I could get after I got a visa. So in the end I will apply for another sort of visa. Quite a bummer, because I could have applied for this sort of visa back home. Would have saved me a lot of problems, being not in the Netherlands at the moment. However, with help from Ank and maybe some other people I should do ok in the end.
I still have quite some time to get it (as you may know we have a deadline for getting a job at October 5th), but I am not allowed to work in the meantime. I do however plan to do some sort of “co-ops” on all schools I may work as a sub to see how they do things, get a hang of working in a Canadian schoolsystem. It would be good advertising for myself as well, to show I am dedicated and serious. Apart from that it will be quite an experience to learn a lot from. I will keep you updated.
In the meantime, besides from working on the translation jobs, Judith called the bank she is with. She already emailed them twice, asking them for a solution on her electronic banking problem. Her bank sends her texts with codes which she needs to enter to complete transactions. However, our cellphones don’t work here (Rogers please make sure you start to set poles here!!!) so she cannot do any transactions. Two e-mails and a lot of frustration (I will get myself another bank with “Random Readers”!!) did not do the job, 3 minutes on the phone did. Slackers at the e-mail desk!
After that succes, Judith went on and send yet another e-mail to the xs4all, our Internet Service Provider back in the Netherlands. In June 2009 we figured out that they had not completed the termination of our contract at Judiths old place (June 2008), where Jitze (Judiths brother) had used it after she moved out (like 4-5 years ago). We had payed their fee for over a year while not having their services anymore! The phoneline used for the DSL connection was shut down June 2008 as well, so it was complete rubbish on their part. Next to that we switched contract for our current DSL connection, and from June until now we have payed a lot of double bills, since they charge us for our old contract, our terminated contract (multiple times) and our new contract for the same month as the old contract. They totally went beserk. If no answer / solution has been reached on monday, we may get our bank to get all the payments back. überslackers!
We went to the Frostbyte cafe. The place where it used to be was empty and they moved, accordingly to the guy at a computer store closeby. We got some vague directions and went on our merry way. Asking again brought us to the actual place, where a lot of guys between 15 and 30 were playing World of Warcraft fanatically. We got the documents for the Criminal Records’ Check scanned and went back home again to e-mail them to Ank.

Thursday August 20
After some work for Judith and some more things to sort out for Bas, we figured it was nice weather and we should go for a canoe trip on the lake. We packed some lunch and around 11.00u we arrived at Tony’s place. We packed our stuff in the canoe and off we went for a trip. We set off towards the Great Slave Lake (remember, the old city, N’Dilo, is in the Yellowknife Bay) and way before reaching the lake we made a corner around the last island. From there, we crossed the bay and continued along the shores on the other side. When one of the islands close to Joliffe island came close, we left our path by the shore and went to the island, where we got out of the canoe, ate a bit and did a bit of fishing. We continued our way, back to the shore across the bay and went on until we found another nice spot to have lunch. It seems like we had no problems at all, but landing the canoe and getting out proved to be more challenging at times than the story thus far implicates. 🙂
We continued again and canoed in a straight line towards Joliffe island, the large island in the Yellowknife Bay. Wind had picked up and produced quite some waves, which made us move in lines that either more or less faced the waves or moved more or less with them. Challenging at times, but we managed to cross the lake towards the island. From there we used the cover of the island and canoed around it. Last stretch was against wind and waves again, but around 14.30u we arrived at Tony’s dock. We met his wife, who was just back from a two week canoe trip, which put our effort into some perspective. 🙂
We had a nice chat, she had worked at the Catholic School Library, so she could tell me something about that school. After that we went home.
That night we went out for dinner at the Wildcat Cafe. We had wild game sates (delicious) and while Judith a stew with various sorts of wild meat, I had a Buffalo rib-eye. We were seated next to two Australian people, who had done quite some travelling during their 50 years of marriage. We exchanged some stories and had a very pleasent night. They offered to drive us home which was pretty nice, because we had suffered quite severe from mosquitos walking our way towards the Wildcat Cafe.

Friday August 21
This was a pretty relaxed day. I worked on finalizing the first movie for our website, but was severely handicapped by Pinnacle Studio 10.6. The last thing before going to bed was upgrading to 10.8. Weird enough, everything works fine but after rendering some parts missed sound. Weird, weird, weird, it remains work in progress.
Judith went to the Liquor store after we did groceries together. Some more work (on website texts this time). I cooked some nice stir fried noodles with bokchoi and other vegetables. Remarkable, since we don’t have a pan to stir fry. 🙂
A quiet evening with some television, then off to bed early.

Friday August 14th 2009, 09.54u. It seems another raven has flown into a powercable. Awefully quiet again, cause at the moment supreme you hear the fridge, the stow and the microwave all power down. Airconditioning in the building makes more noice than you realize and this is the moment you do realize that. And of course the internet connection, the brightness of the laptopscreen…… It all changes. But we were not as surprised as last time.
Unfortunately our conversation was about coffee and we had just concluded it would be a good plan to make some. Only 8 minuts without electricity this time. A shreek sound from the fire alarm, brightness of laptop screen back. Waiting for the router to come online again. Loading and turning on the coffeemaker.

Well, this gives me a perfect opportunity to make this post into a small update, since it has been awefully quiet on the site for the last two days. Wednesday was a day with work and a small walk to Rat Lake. We went by the two High Schools (St. Pats and Sir John Franklin) just to check them out. Rat Lake was small and since we forgot our insect repellent, we went by it fast to go back to the city. For me the walk resulted in two new bites. 🙁

Wednesday evening I reheated the risotto I made tuesday evening. It was quite an adventure tuesday evening to make it and I was glad it worked out fine. It again pointed out the different opinions the Chateau Nova Hotel and I have about a “fully equipped kitchen”. Despite the culinary handicaps both Judith and I were pleased by the result. Wednesday I was creative again in the kitchen (to cook something to accompany the reheated risotto) and made a “Hamburguesa Canadiense al pan”, or a Canadian hamburger (by Uruguayan standards that is ;-)) on bread. Add some baked out bacon, a baked egg, cheese and some ketchup to your burger on a toasted burger bun and you recreate the delicious burger I made.

Thursday we went to the “Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Center”. Quite a name, but it turned out to be quite a museum as well. A lot of information about the different Inuit people that live and have lived here, information about the early days of air travel around the arctic circle and information about the animals that live here. Insightful and truly remarkable at times. It also gave us an idea about how little people from Europe or other parts of the world come here. The guestbook in front of museum revealed the names some people from France, Germany, Belgium and one other Dutch family that had been there in the last month. Abundant were the names of Canadians and Americans. We do know the Japanese cheat, because we saw a few exploring the musem through the viewer of their cameras, but we didn’t find their names in the book. So we’re sure there must have been more of those.

After 3-4 hours well spend in the museum we picked up some groceries and went back to the hotel. No cooking this time, because we wanted to celebrate the fact that we were in Yellowknife for over a week now by going to a nice restaurant. So we went to “Le Frolic / l’Heritage”, two restaurants that were in the same spot. We still don’t know why it had two names, but the food was quite ok. After we try some other restaurants I should see if I could make a comparing article on restaurants in Yellowknife ;-).

Today our plan of renting a canoe to explore the lake was postponed again. More wind then was predicted yesterday and not as warm. We do hope the forecast for tomorrow is correct, cause we figured we would make reservations for the canoes and force ourselves on really carrying out our canoe-plan. At the moment it is work again. We’ll see what we’ll do this afternoon. It may be time to honour our good friend Tim with another visit.

 “Our” power outage was mentioned in yesterday’s newspaper!

Tuesday, August 11th, 07.55u. We’re up early. I allready installed myself in the bedroom to work there. We did a test yesterday and it works not being in the same room when you’re both busy on a job or getting a job. Both things are more effective.

But not at the moment. At the earlier mentioned time, electricity went down. Total silence, the laptops went to a less bright mode to preserve energy. Not too bad, one would say, weren’t it that Judith was just planning to do an interview by phone for which she needed the website of the company. And well,  wifi routers don’t  tend to work without electricity. So there was some slight panic, a call to the reception. “Yes it is down in the main building as well, but we’re hoping it gets back on in a few minuts.” No panic there, that’s for sure.

But at these moments you start thinking. In the Netherlands, We rely on electricity for a lot of things we need in life to work. In Canada, that’s even more so, since we cook using electricity, we make toast using electricity, we make tea using electricity, we make coffee using electricity. The airconditioning, the lights……. we had a lot of machinery that went down when they were suddenly denied the energy they needed. So we remain in silence, apart from a shreek signal going from room to room in the building, warning us a vital system is without energy.

08.07u: after 12 minuts that seemed to last like an hour, the lights went on again, a last shreeking sound, a breath of relief. Life reboots and continues. The world seems to have forgotten it stood still seconds ago. And apart from a guy in a bedroom on the 3rd floor of a hotel, who wrote this all down, nobody seems to care for that moment the weakness of mankind was so painfully exposed…..

As you all can see, Canada is treating us well. Nice weather, nice hotel, nice people. However we did run into some things that were not like we were used to. Of course that is to be expected when going to a different country. Some of the things may be typical to Yellowknife, some may be typical to the Northwest Territories, I don’t know, but here is a list of what surprised, amazed and / or puzzled us:

1. Today, we did a hike, walking a path that went north of the Frame Lake. After a well deserved break at Tim Hortons, we wanted to take the bus home. We went to the busstop, just as we did yesterday and waited for the bus. It didn’t arrive. After close examination of the bus schedule it struck us that “Sunday” was never mentioned on it….. anywhere! So we can go to a supermarket on sunday, or to a gas station, to a mall…. virtually every store is open for business. But no bus to get there or to go home…..
2. In the last few days, we bought quite some different kinds of pop soda and juices, which came, totally expected, in plastic bottles. Those bottles can be recycled and you pay a small deposit (for the Dutchies: “statiegeld”, for the non-Dutchies: don’t try to pronounce that word!), which you get back once you bring the bottle back. However, when we went back to the exact same store where we bought the bottles, the girl at the counter looked rather startled and asked her co-worker, one counter next to us: “Do we recycle?!?”. The answer was “No”. Turns out this system is widely used: you do pay the store a deposit, but you can’t get your deposit back by bringing the bottle back to them. No no, you need to go to a central facility where you can get the deposit back from all the bottles of all the stores in Yellowknife. Apart from being logistically challenging to the customer, it must be the same for the stores and the facilities. I picture empty trucks going back from the stores and more filled and empty trucks going to the central recycling facility and back. Of course this will help you keep unemployment at low levels. As Cruijff said: “Every disadvantage has an advantage to it.” Or was that vice versa?
3. I may have mentioned it before, but the stop signs at every road crossing that force you to make a full stop, even if there is nobody there. And of course the waste of fuel, accelerating over and over again, even worse when lookin at #4. I know in the Netherlands we have a simular fetish with roundabouts, but at least the fuel consumption of those is less…..
4. The huge cars. I mean, doing your groceries in a 4×4 pickup truck that seats 4-5 ppl, or an MPV (Multiple Persons really doesn’t mean you and your 5 other personalities) or a SUV? Of course this may have something to do with 5, but still
5. The huge quantities of food in the supermarket. For example: I wanted to buy salt. At the store we went, we couldn’t get it in a smaller pack than 10 kilograms. 10 kilograms of salt?!?! I seriously doubt if I have eaten that much salt in my entire life! On a sidenote, I do like buying 2 liters of Lemon Ice Tea for $0,99 (ex VAT and deposit, see #2) 🙂
6. The units used. Inches, foot, stones, fahrenheit (thumbs up for supporting the Dutchies here though), oz, lb….. and so on. Yes, I know Canada switched recently and perhaps with some time it will become better, but apart from the Commonwealth countries, Canadians must have a hard time explaining how much they want of something to the rest of the world.
7. Having telecom providers that have no service in a town. I mean, bad reception is one thing, I think around the world we all recognize that, but having no reception at all….. weird! And inconvenient, if it turns out the only provider that has a roaming contract with your Dutch provider has no service in Yellowknife. :-S

Anyways, we like a lot as well. Just to give a list of that as well and avoid the risk of sounding like a bad adapting person, I want to point out we got easily adjusted to:

1. Tim Hortons
2. Iced Capp
3. Timbits
4. People that do feel a law is something you should obey
5. People that will greet you when you pass them
6. Space channel ( I think I need to say I got easily adjusted to that, I am still waiting for Judith to do so)
7. Air conditioning
8. Toast with breakfast and lunch
9. Open WiFi networks

For those of you who don’t master the beautiful Dutch language, this blog may seem to be quite hostile. We do plan to post in English as well, yet the first few days in Canada has been demanding: we don’t seem to suffer from anything resembling a jetlag, yet we are quite tired at the end of the day because of all the new impressions. Our world has been put upside down, and we’re still adjusting to it.

So don’t fear, posts in English will appear more and more often, since it is the language we’ll be using a lot living in Canada.