100th Post!

This is the 100th Post on Bond's Blog! Time to celebrate!

And the timing couldn't be more appropriate:

• Today is my birthday!
• I am finishing my time here in England, and moving on!
• And it's the one year anniversary of my blog!

Truly perfect!

I can't believe it has been one year since I've started blogging (August 2006!) What a ride it's been! I wrote in my first ever post, Blog the First: " ...my plan is to document my travels in this blog for the next year (in an attempt to reduce the number of mass emails!)"

And I have been. I thought it appropriate to celebrate the 100th Post by listing the top 10 things I will miss about England, specifically Birmingham. I leave the city for good on August 14th - one week from now - and I want to chronicle what I've enjoyed here, as much for my own benefit as yours!

(I know, two list posts in a row. I blame Mitch for it! Yell at him!)

- 10 Things I Will Miss About Birmingham -

1. Harborne: The town I live in! 9 pubs, 8 charity shops, 7 restaurants, 6 banks, 3 supermarkets, 2 bookstores (one called Bond's Books - one reason I wanted to live here!), 2 chip shops, the Subway, the Blockbuster, the Home Bargains, the Art Store, the park, and the community center. The Harborne Carnival brings everyone together once a year. Feels good here!
   
2. Architecture: Birmingham is trying so hard. Amongst the run down dirty parts of the city, there are wonderful buildings and amazing architecture that I will miss looking at: the bulbous Selfridges building covered with thousands of mirrored disks, the stone Art Gallery and Victoria Square with the beautiful fountain and steps, the tall thin alien BT Tower, the many red brick houses, and the new modern style of Centenary Square and Brindley Place with it's open spaces, statues, and canals!
   
3. A Cup'a Tea: After being in England a year, I appreciate the taste of a good cup of tea! One teabag, into hot water, very short steep time, squash the teabag with the spoon, one sugar, dash of milk, stir....and sip. Mmmmm...
   
4. Pub Culture: More than just a place to drink, the pub is a meeting place, a landmark, a comfort zone, a restaurant, a games room, a Quiz Night, and the place to take a date! British life revolves around the local pub (mine is the Varsity - 22 seconds from my door to the pub, sober. And 5-20 minutes after a couple - usually due to a stop for a kebab 'n' chips or a Subway! Mmmm...)
   
5. Proximity to Europe: The bounty of Europe is just a short flight across the channel! And it is so easy and cheap to get there; EasyJet and RyanAir. Anywhere you want - France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Greece... so simple!
   
6. The Pound: I will miss earning money in pounds. I love looking at my bank balance and converting it into Canadian dollars in my head! It makes me giggle with delight! Although, the downside is that I have to rent a movie for 4 quid (= $ 9.50 !!!!)
   
7. The Safety of the Streets: Broad St in particular, where the nightlife is. Police, CCTV cameras, and well lit areas abound in this city which used to have a reputation as being dirty and dangerous. Now, it parts of it are clean and very safe. On more than one occasion, I have walked home late at night always feeling very safe!
   
8. My House: 13 Albany Road - the site of many parties, dinners, movie and game nights, TV viewings (Hollyoaks and Big Brother..), arguments, sleep-ins, painting times, quiets moments, days off, no heat, film scenes, barbecues, ant infestations, lunar eclipses, accidents, police talks, and late nights! A three-legged cat we call 'Stubs' or 'Stubby' visits us frequently! I'll miss my big room and it's wooden floors, high ceilings, and sink.
   
9. Family so close: It has been spectacular having so much of my family so close in England! On my Mom's side - Dave, Naomi, and Gloria, and on my Dad's side - my Granny, Nigel and Joyce, Tim and Meena, Elaine and Richard, Sarah and Abby, Yasmeen, Escandar, Rocheen, Angie and John, Lara and James, Nicky, Rav and baby Mia! I also consider my good friends Marianne, Duncan, and Nathalie family too! I will miss them all!
   
10. Friends: So many new friends! I'll miss mostly my housemates - Roger, Leon, Lee, Emily, and Andy. I'll also miss Lewis, Zoe, Karl, Catherine, Lisa, Ian, Teresa, Hassen, Renata, Katerina, Kate, Sophie, Debbie, Cate, Mary, Tina, Nicky, Claire, Michelle, Faye, and Sarah. I've made some fantastic friends who will stay with me my whole life, for which I am very happy!

So there we go: the top 10 things I will miss about Birmingham. But what next? The Traveler moves on...

• August 16 - fly to Madrid, then meet Greg in Lisbon
• August 19 to September 5 - travel around Portugal and Spain, taking in Lagos, Seville, Valencia, Ibiza, and Barcelona, including La Tomatina (tomato fight festival!)
• September 5 to 10 - show Greg around London (might visit Birmingham one last time)
• September 10 to 15 - spend a week in New York City, before flying home!
• Later - Move to South Korea for a year to teach English with my friend Steve!

Whew, a full packed summer! Only a week left in England and I have to spend most of it packing and cleaning my house.

That finishes my 100th post! Wish me luck on my travels and on another exciting year of blogging!

Canada Day in the UK!

Pete Bond brings Canada Day to Birmingham!

Sunday brought July 1st - Confederation Day for Canada - and my British friends and I celebrated in style! As the only Canadian, I was in the perfect position to educate the masses:

-Canada is the second largest country in the World.
-Canada loves Hockey (Vancouver Canucks!)
-Canadian Animals
-Canada is NOT American (we are Northern North Americans!)
-Famous Canadians (Micheal J Fox, Brian Adams, etc... but also Lois Maxwell (Mrs. Moneypenny!), Rachel McAdams, William Shatner (Kirk!), Alex Trebec (Jeperody!), James Cameron (Titanic/Terminator!), Kim Cattrall (Sex and the City!), Matthew Perry (Friends!), Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Ann Moss (the Matrix!), Alexander Graham Bell (telephone!), and Margot Kidder (Lois Lane!) Whew!

We decorated the house with Canadiana (my info posters, map, and my flag!) and Emily cooked some incredibly tasty 'Canadian' food! Canadian Won-Ton, Pizza, and Soup. (Thanks so much, Em!)

And BEER!!! Unfortunately, we could not find Canadian beer (Is Coors Canadian?), so Ian and Lisa put Canadian stickers on Fosters (yeah, they thought Australian was close to Canadian... both colonies?) Karl and Catherine brought maple syrup, Canadian Dry soda, pancakes, and beef jerky! Claire brought Canadian Club whiskey! This is what the British think Canadians consume!

After a failed bonfire, we discovered an artifact from the past! While fanning the fire with a serving tray, it was hit too hard and broke. Within the tray we discovered some old newspaper. As the rain started to fall, we salvaged the old yellowed paper and brought it inside. Increadible, the newspaper was dated August 27th, 1950! I'll post pics soon, because the articles are fascinating! More on it soon...

With such a discovery under our belt, Canada Day couldn't have got better. Yet it did! At the end of the night, we went to the Harborne Legion (2 doors down!). They had an open mic for the regulars ('regulars' being of an average age of 81!), and the dancing began! 6 young fit single 20-somethings dancing with 40 old wrinkled frisky 80-somethings... It was a fantastically fun time!

Happy Canada Day!

Houseparty last night

The '13 Albany House Posse' had a party here last night and we are slowly cleaning up. It was a good party with lots of drinking and some dancing. It was over the moon! No, literally. The moon was eclipsed last night! We were so lucky that the sky was clear and the lunar eclipse was spectacular.

Lunar Eclipse
(I didn't take this pic, but I did take some video I'll post later.)

Some of the highlights from the party include:

-Leon eating an entire onion for 20 pounds on a bet. He did it and smelled like onion after.
-Carl and Roger bet to see who could eat an entire pack of Jaffa Cakes first. Carl won by default as Roger began to choke after the first 5 cakes. He then threw up all the cakes and lost the bet. Roger is fine and doing well.
-Someone slipped on our front steps and was knocked unconscious. Her friends took her to the clinic and she's ok, I think.
-The Lunar Eclipse happened. Resulting in lots of moon jokes and puns. Loony.
-2 glasses smashed (I didn't break any last night. I only broke one while setting up the party and blowing up balloons. Best to not play volleyball around glasses.)
-A shopping cart full of beer and mixer out in the backyard.
-I went to sleep at 6am, woke up today at 12:30pm.
-No neighbours banging on the walls or telling us to turn down the music.
-Police cars slowing down outside our house.
-Random food on the floor: scotch egg, chip, pea (?), sausage roll.
-1am punch made by Roger including gin, rum, cranberry, lee & perins, chili vodka.
-Chili vodka jello: very spicy and jiggly.
-Random person sleeping on four chairs (of different heights) in our living room. I don't know who he was.
-No hangover for me!

All in all a great party. I hope your Saturday night was as fun and lune-y as mine!

Where there is smoke...

So my house has not burnt down and I am still alive. I was never really in mortal peril, but it's not everyday that the building two doors down catches fire!

The firemen did their job and put out the fire, leaving a charred pile of burnt furniture on the sidewalk.

The resulting husk of the burnt-out building....umm...looks fine?

In fact, it is hard to tell that there was a fire in this building at all! Obviously the bricks did their jobs and contained the fire (80% of Birmingham's buildings are made of brick!)

Free firewood, anyone?

Do you smell smoke?

It is 11:00 pm here in the UK, and the building two doors down from me is on fire.

After hearing shouts and sirens, I poked my head out the door and was greeted with a spectacle of flashing lights and the smell of smoke. Fire trucks were stopped outside of my house with crowds of tipsy merry-makers from the Legion pointing and gasping. So I went inside and grabbed my camera!

Firemen entering the house

The house two doors down had a plume of white smoke pouring from the roof. Fire fighters in full gear observed the situation, then busted into the boarded up building. Smoke billowed out of the open door and hoses were brought in. The building was empty and had just been sold.

The firetrucks outside the Legion

Smoke and lights fill the house on fire.
My house is behind the white car!

The situation is still ongoing, and I'll update you all once it's finished. I should be safe...

Albany Road - completely blocked off

One Year Later - One Rockin' Band

As some of you may know, my sister -Lisa- is the lead-singer of the North Vancouver band One Year Later! About a week ago, they played at the Buffalo Club:


Luckily, someone recorded them playing one of their songs, and Lisa has posted the video on her myspace site. Please check it out here! (You'll need to scroll down.) It rocks! I've also put it here, below. I am one proud big brother...



...in other news, I joined my housemates in participating in the "Harborne Mile." This event is a pub crawl which hits most pubs along Harborne High Street: Oneill's, The White Horse, Harborne Stores, The Vine, The Varsity... and some others. After drinking a pint in each, you tend to forget names of pubs! In the immortal words of the other world-famous North Van band, Spirit of the West:

"Well were good old boys, we come from Harborne,
drinkers and carousers, the best you've ever seen,
and this night by God, we'll drink till there was no more,
from Oneill's to the Varsity, and all stops in between!"

Cheers! Bottom's up!

Snow Day

Well the skies have opened and we've been covered by 15cm of the white stuff - snow! For those still in suspense, all the schools in Birmingham closed today...and will stay closed tomorrow! And the next week! (Though that's due to the half-term break, not the snow!)

So how did I celebrate my day off? Well, I slept in! After a strange dream of running around with police and playing tag with a hula-hoop (I don't know why!), I woke up to the cold - the boiler was off again! Called the landlord and he came over and fixed it again...We shall see how long this 'fix' will last.

After watching Little Miss Sunshine (which was hilarious!) my roommates came back early and we all decided to head to the pub where it was nice and warm. It's been a few hours and a few pitchers since then and I am feeling a bit wobbly as I write this.

I also picked up a bunch of travel guidebooks from the library today, so I'm going to spend tomorrow reading up on Spain, Portugal, Greece, and the UK. This is because decisions need to be made. Plans are coming together: after traveling somewhere for a bit in July and August, I'm going to meet up with my good friend Greg (from Vancouver) in Lisbon, Portugal! We are going to experience Spain and it's tomato festival before doing a bit of London sight-seeing. Can't wait!

Until then I'll be enjoying my time off in the snow!

Day in the Life of a Brummie

Well today's been an interesting day in the life of Me: Birmingham Resident.
It all began with a flame...

The flame I mean is the one inside the boiler tank of my flat. It went out yesterday, leaving the six roommates without hot water or, more importantly, heat. Heat isn't usually a problem, but on this night of nights, the temperature outside had dropped to a chilly -4 C and the house was-a-cold!

After a chilly start to the day (boy did I want to stay in my warm cozy bed), I took the hour-long bus ride to Timberley School to find I would be teaching reception this morning. For those not English, reception = kindergarten! What a blast! It was Cameron's 5th birthday, so we all sang and hugged. Then we read Jack and the Beanstalk and put the story in order! Then it was Numeracy (or maths or math for the non-English) and we spent the entire lesson cutting out shapes with scissors! And without cutting or stabbing anyone!
The afternoon was in the dreaded year 4 class that I don't like...but I won't talk about it as it frustrates me.

After a good day at work, I enjoy a good commute home. Unfortunately, someone HAD to call in a bomb scare in the conference center and the police HAD to evacuate and seal off the downtown core of Birmingham, making my bus detour around the entire city. This added 30 minutes to my commute...not so bad considering if it was a real bomb!

This leads me up to now, where any second the skies will open and we shall receive our first big snowfall! We have a heavy snow warning out there and it is set to fall all night and into the morning commute, paralyzing Brummies (who act very much like Vancouverites do when they get a little snow!) Should be a fun morning tomorrow...

...I'm kinda hopping school will be closed and I can play in the snow. Ah snow. And who says my life here in Brum isn't exciting!

Harborne at Sunset

The weather here in Birmingham in December is cool and crisp, with some rain spells. The sunsets and sunrises have been beautiful recently. These shots are up and down the High Street here in Harborne (click to enlarge).


This is the front of my flat. I live on the ground floor and my bedroom is behind the large white bay windows!

I am experimenting painting with acrylics. This is my ammonite so far... What do you think?

International Vodka Party

We had our first party last Saturday night in our flat. The theme was International Vodka and Czech Food!

Kate and Renata and her friend (all Czech) cooked us classic Czech food (dumplings, soup, goulash - all fantastic!) while we drank shots of Czech and Polish vodka. And beer.

Soon our flat was filled with people talking, drinking, and dancing. There were over 25 intentional friends from Poland, France, Czech, Finland, Germany, and India - as well as us British and Canadians!



You can see us all squished into our living room area (yes - that's Van Gogh on the wall). This room ended up becoming a dance hall as we turned off the lights, while the party continued in the kitchen and hallway.


Arjun and Kate having a laugh!

roommates: Me, Renata, and Roger!


We all had a great time during the party, but were feeling sore the next morning! But that's what indicates a good party!



Leon, Roger and Renata.


As you can see, I am making a few friends here in Harborne! Patrick, Renata, Leon, and Roger are great roommates and we go out quite often. We will be having a sixth and final roommate join us on the 18th of December: Emily - a jewelry designer - Just in time for Christmas!

Until then, keep on partying...

Harborne - Best of the Brum

I am living in a room in a six bedroom house on Albany Road in Harborne, a nice small town based around a main street with all the necessities (grocery shops, video stores, book stores, banks, and chip shops). There are also at least 5 pubs in the area (in order: The Green Man, The Plough, Harborne Stores, Varsity, O'neills...could be more too), with O'neills being right across the street from my flat!
(Hi Dave!).

My room (the largest in the house with wood flooring, double bed, sink, and floor-to-ceiling bay windows - that overlook the street and the town's local probation office - ex-cons? Cool!) is very nice, but needs decor. I bought a lava lamp, some postcards, a Canadian flag, and a wooden poseable artist's model thing to put around. Needs more though. The walls are very white.

At the moment, my roommates include Patrick (not pictured: a British EPA businessman), Kate (pictured right: a Chech PhD student working on cancer research at Birmingham University), and Renata (pictured left: another Chech PhD student, Kate's friend, also working on the same cancer research project!). We've been out as a house a few times and they are really nice fun people. The house holds six, so there will be more roommates to come!

About 15 minutes walk away is the University of Birmingham, which holds Birmingham's Lapworth Museum of Geology and Palaeontology. It holds Charles Lapworth's Collection, the assemblage of fossils used to create the Ordovician Period in 1879. It is one of Europe's oldest natural history museums and contains over 250 000 specimens, including many skulls, footprints and other fossils from around Britain, as well as Burgess Shale (BC-Canadian) and Solnhofen Limestone (German) material. The museum was also used in top secret to assess the geology of the Normandy landing beaches prior to the D-Day invasion. I will definitely be spending more time here!



"Ouch! Bad T-Rex, Bad!"
Allosaur skull and foot, with Deinonycus and Velociraptor skulls, and a Megaloceras (big deer) skull behind.

I have just returned from a week off from school, so I will tell you all about that soon! (Short version though: London, family, art, Kate Moss, Canadian Store, bus, anamatronic dinos, beer, dancing, fish 'n' chips, castles, Charles Darwin!)

Birmingham - phoenix Rising

Birmingham is like a city waking up from a nightmare. The fact is that Birmingham was an industrial city and suffered heavy bomb damage during World War II, and thus the city center was extensively re-developed during the 1950s and 60s, with many concrete office buildings, ring-roads, and pedestrian subways. As a result, Birmingham gained a reputation for ugliness and depression.

Birmingham was also apparently the birthplace of the nuclear weapons and much of the research into the development of nuclear weaponry happened at Birmingham University during the 1940s. Ugly.




In recent years however, Birmingham has been transformed with the city center extensively renovated with the construction of new squares and the restoration of old streets, buildings and canals (apparently Birmingham has more canals than Venice does). Some pedestrian subways have been removed, and the Bull Ring shopping center has been redeveloped, including the architecturally unique alien-looking Selfridges building (see pictures).

I like Birmingham. It is a city trying to be better. It has really good nightlife and parks, and the people are very nice and helpful. It's just that accent...hard to describe and hard to like. It is sort of like John Lennon's accent except less lyrical and harder to understand. Makes understanding my students quite difficult!



More shots of Birmingham City Center.












I live in the beautiful town of Harborne south-west of the city center.

More to come...

Settling in...

Hurray! I am now the new resident of a room in a six bedroom house in a small village of Harborne (home of Birmingham's professionals). It is the nicest part of town I have seen so far, and it is only 20 min buy bus (one bus only!) to my school (I also bought a monthly bus pass yesterday). So I am pretty set up and ready to begin life here in Birmingham. I'll be updating more regularly once my flat gets wireless (landlord says within two weeks)...

So I am off to do some lesson planning - which will be my life for the next year - but I thought I'd show you four photos from a small museum in Munich close to where Nathalie lives, the Museum Mensch und Natur:

1.) A very non-descript entrance-way...

2.) The centerpiece of the museum: a camptosaur mount, huge ammonite, and a glyptodon model (never seen one of 'em before!) - click to enlarge!

#.) Then there was this hilarious model of the jurassic - dino time! But look closer...

4.) A close-up reveals...Oh no!...he's eating Kermit the Frog!!!

Poor Kermie....