Today we tied up tomatoes in the greenhouse. Carl explained how to do it.
Same as the cucumbers. But you want to make sure that you, that you get them over a ... strong branch. And preferably one that points out a bit. Otherwise it tends to slide out. These carry a lot of weight when they get loaded up with their, with their tomatoes. So it needs kind of one bearing branch. And the second one, the weight will kind of sit on that one. And try not to get, um, see this is going to be tomatoes, so we don't want that stuck through there.
In the afternoon I did some editing in the little cabin by the river. We have internet access here. It's wireless but the router is in the house and the connection is quite unstable so it's hard to upload video. Hopefully were going to get a cable out here in the next few days.
The cabin isn't quite as flash as the tdes studio in Niseko - but it's really nice being by the river. Instead of hearing politicians, traffic and kareoke we can hear running water and birds..
Today we worked in the greenhouse all day tying up cucumber plants. It was our forth day working here. It's been fun. There are two other wwoofers here. This is Matt. He's from Oakville, near Toronto or Torono as they say. This is Travis. He's from Calgary. Travis plays the piano. There's some animals here like this dog. Some hummingbirds. And other birds like this one. I don't know what this is called. And there are lots of pretty flowers too.
Going to Canada 2007 Day 9: Cucumbers and Tomatoes
This morning we worked in the greenhouse. Our job was to tie up cucumber plants. Cucumber plants naturally grow along the ground. We clipped them to pieces of string which are attached to a wire that runs along the top of the greenhouse.
We also picked off the crocked little cumbers and the yellow ones, which are dead. And we picked off parts of the plant called suckers.
It gets really hot working in this greenhouse.
While we worked we saw some cute little frogs and some worms.
This is one of the places where we go to the toilet. They call it an outhouse. In New Zealand these kind of toilets are called long drops.
They are planning to build another outhouse by the wwoofing cabin.
The place where we're staying is called Mariposa Organic Farm.
It's in Cawston, which is about 20 minutes drive from Keremeos. The farm was started 1962 and was one of the first organic farms in Canada. They grow vegetables like squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, eggplants, lettuce. They sell the vegetables to retail outlets.
We're staying in this little cabin by the river. It's really warm here but you can see snow on the mountains in the distance. You can't swim in the river at the moment because of all the melting snow - but later on in summer you can.
Apparently it almost never rains here, so the sprinklers are on all the time. The water comes from a well.
This morning our job was weeding and picking lettuce in the hothouse. We had the afternoon off and in the evening we planted some tomatoes.
We went to bed about 1:30 and got up at 4 to get ready to leave Vancouver. We packed up our stuff and took a few photos of the Grand Trunk Hostel. I recommend this place if you're looking for somewhere really cheap to stay in Vancouver. It's a bit dirty in the corners, but it's not too bad. And I thought the owner was a really nice guy. I think his name was Joe. English isn't his first language and there were a few mistakes on the signs. I've never seen anyone write aftering before so I thought that was interesting.
It took half an hour to walk to the station. The bus ticket to Keremeos cost 57 dollars. Our bus driver's name was Jim Curry. We left Vancouver at quarter past six.
The suburbs we drove through as we left the city were really pretty. Lots of tree-lined streets. Some of the places where we stopped on the way had automatic gates.
On the bus we ate the huge strawberries that we bought yesterday. We saw some yellow school buses, just like on movies. We saw some cargo trains.
There were lots of white bundles in the fields. I don't what they were but they looked cool.
We saw quite a few Canadian flags flying.
One of our breaks was at Billy's Family Restaurant.
I was tired but I didn't really want to sleep because I was enjoying looking at the scenery. It was really beautiful. I saw a bear which was pretty exciting. And we saw some little animals that crawled up out of the ground. They might have been moles. I'm not sure. Anyway, I've never seen them before.
We arrived in Keremeos at quarter past 12.
While we were waiting to be picked up we talked to a woman who was also waiting. She was really friendly. She came from a town near Vancouver and she was telling me how much it had changed over 20 years or so that she had been living there.
After a while our WWOOF host picked us up, then we picked up his kids from school and then we drove home and spent the afternoon getting settled in.
This is the view from out our window. Vancouver has electric buses. And ambulances. Of course.
This area is called Gastown. I thought it might be because gas used to be produced or sold here. But yesterday the artist we saw in the street explained that Gastown comes from a famous guy whose nickname was Gassy Jack. Gassy is an informal word meaning verbose. Gassy Jack got his nickname because he used to talk a lot.
Today we had lunch at the Indian restaurant across the road. The food was good. And so was the service.
We went back to the Chinese shops to buy some fruit. I saw some massive ginger. And a Garfield maneki neko.
This shop looks like it has trouble with kids breaking stuff. Quite a few shops had this sign. I've noticed the word washroom is common in Canada.
In the evening we thought about going to the drum circle or the reggae night but we were pretty tired and didn't end up going to either of them.
Instead I did some editing and checked where the bus station was and what time the bus left in the morning.
Today we went for a walk around Vancouver. I gradually got used to people begging in the streets although two people verbally abused me for not giving them money which wasn't very nice.
We saw some people building. Two guys were holding up some cardboard signs to passing cars. I wondered what the signs said.
Newsreaders. Cool ball. Massive ship.
I liked the downtown skateboard park. I thought it was a good use of space. The guys there were wearing tight pants. I remembered that last week Mike was telling me that when he was younger they pants they wore skateboarding were so baggy that it was hard to skate.
We went to Chinatown and saw a lot of cheap, delicious-looking fruit and vegetables.
There didn't seem to be many restaurants there. But maybe we were in the wrong place. We found one place with Cambodian and Vietnamese exotic food. It seemed like a popular place. We had to wait for a table. Out of 100 items on the menu there was only one thing without meat which surprised me. Then again, I've never been to Cambodia or Vietnam so maybe it's normal there.
Our waitress was nice. I asked her twice about what the thing we were eating was called, but I forgot both times. I think she said it was called "Chinese broccoli" in English - but it didn't really look like broccoli.
After that we had coffee at La Luna. On the way home we saw a guy painting in the street. And a famous clock.
In the evening we met up with a Japanese guy Jun, who emailed me after watching The Daily English Show. He's been in Vancouver for about a year. He was studying and now he's looking for work. Jun turned out to be a cool guy and we had a good night.
We managed to get to the airport on time and checked in without any problems. We had breakfast in the morning and got to the airport at lunch time. So, by the time they served the first meal it was about 3 o’clock. And we were pretty hungry. The first meal was good but the meal after that was a shocker. I couldn’t believe they served us “cup noodles”. Instant noodles ... what?! Then it got even worse, they gave us hash browns. It was like I’d flown to hell and someone was forcing me to eat McDonalds.
:34 They showed four movies. Two of them I thought were so lame I stopped watching after a few minutes. But the other two I watched the whole way through. One was a kind of drama / romance. Just after they fell in love he died, that was pretty sad. The other one was a romantic comedy. A girl was having trouble choosing between the rich arsehole and the poor nice guy. In the end she chose the poor nice guy. So no mind expanding plot lines available on that flight.
1:02 I slept a bit on the flight. But when we landed in Vancouver after a 10 hour flight it was midnight Taipei time. So we were feeling pretty tired And it was 9am in Vancouver so I knew we were in for some hardcore jet lag. But I wasn’t really expecting what happened at customs. I’ve never had any trouble with customs before in any country. So I guess there’s a first time for everything. They questioned us separetly for about an hour. It was awful. They asked me so many personal questions. And most of them I thought had nothing to do with my being in Canada. I wondered how much of it was really necessary. And how much of it was just them enjoying the power trip or being nosey. All of the customs officers looked about the same age as me. It was like I was back in high school and some nasty kids who thought they were special had gathered round to mock me. I guess it’s partly to check if you’ll pose a threat to the safety of Canadian citizens. And partly to give you a lasting impression of a nasty experience of going through customs so you’ll pass the word on and discourage others from trying to stay in Canada as a visitor for more than a few weeks without a lot of money.
2:13 One of the customs girls gave her opinion – as if we needed it - about how bad she thought the Korean government was. And then she bitched about some American tourists, which I thought was such bad form.
Anyway, at the time it was a pretty nasty experience, but I don’t feel too sorry for myself because I know a lot of people go through a lot worse.
I was planning to check my email at the airport to see if the room that I had booked was confirmed. I thought most airports have the internet available free. But this one didn’t! It was 10 dollars an hour - which I thought was ridiculous. So we just decided to take a taxi to the hostel and hope they had a room available.
2:49 The taxi ride went smoothly. Our driver was pretty cool. He was wearing a pink turban. He came from India about 18 years ago. We asked him if he thought Canada was a good place to live, and he said he did. He gave an example. He said when we were standing in the taxi line, if a person who was high up in the Canadian government had come and stood in the line, they would have had to wait in the line like everyone else. But he said if it was in India it would have been different.
3:17 When we got to the hostel, they didn’t have a room available. But the woman there was nice and she called another hostel nearby and said we could stay there, so we walked there.
3:39 One of the images I have of North America is of friendly, fat smiling people wearing blue jeans and crisp white souvenir t shirts. And my image of Vancouver was of a kind of multi-cultural Pleasantville with everyone strolling around the city smiling and satisfied with living in the greatest city in the world. So you can imagine my shock when the first person who talked to us was begging for money. And the first street we happened to walk down after we dropped our bags off and decided to go and check out the highly anticipated great city of Vancouver, we later found out was – according to the guy in the dairy – the worst street in Vancouver. At first we walked past a few crazy looking people and I didn’t really think much of it until we looked further up the road and everywhere we looked there were these people that looked like zombies. Most of them were underweight, wearing dirty clothes, shuffling slowly along the street or sitting or standing and swaying.
4:43 A lot of them were pushing supermarket trolleys full of stuff that looked like rubbish. There were both men and woman of various ages. Most of them were Caucasian … with pale, grayish skin, sunken cheeks and hollow eyes. They looked like they were still alive, but had no soul. One of them asked me if I wanted anything and I said: ah, no thanks. But what I really thought was: if it makes me look like you - hell, no. It was one of the most shocking things I’ve ever seen. And we wanted to get out of there asap. Except that we didn’t know which direction to go because they were everywhere. It was kind of ironic that less than an hour after the customs officers were telling me off for not having enough money now people were asking me to give them money. I had a fair idea of what these people were on. But I also wondered what whoever decided Vancouver was the best city in the world was on.
Of course I knew we were probably just in a bad area and later on when we were talking to the guy in the dairy he said the rest of Vancouver was fine. “Just don’t go down that street,” he said, pointing to the first street we had walked down.
artist: The TenGooz album: It's Time! tracks: Vonja Vonja(world funk), Almost out Of Time, Lost in Translation from: Tsukuba, Japan album at Jamendo artist at Jamendo artist site
Today we told the happy family manager about the leaking air-con. He told us it was leaking because it was old. Fair enough. He also gave us a towel to mop up the water. Problem solved. Sweet.
Today's lunch wasn't so great. The place that we went to didn't have pictures on the menu so we just kind of randomly chose things. The thing I chose tuned out to be a pot full of fake meat. I really don't like fake meat. I wasn't too keen on the decor either.
After lunch we found a nice cafe. The coffee was tasty and there was balcony with a nice view.
In the evening we decided to go and check out the tallest building in the world - Taipei 101. We took the subway and I was impressed with how easy it was to navigate. I saw some feedback forms, so I filled one out.
The area around Taipei 101 was quite different from the area around Taipei Main Station. It was spacious, clean, quiet. It reminded me of Odaiba in Tokyo - pretty, but a little bit lifeless.
Inside Taipei 101 there were a lot of famous brand shops and lots of massive posters of Nicole Kidman's face.
It was a nice place. But it made me feel a bit poor and scruffy.
We found a Korean place on the ground floor and ate some ishiyaki bibimba. Very tasty.
There was a Japanese guide book in the hostel so we brought it with us and for the third night in a row tried to find somewhere to have a drink or two.
We followed the instructions in the book and the first place we found was this place called Mint. But the bouncers were wearing suits and I didn't want to face the possible rejection so we didn't even try going in.
Next we found a place called Brown Sugar - there were no bouncers so we walked straight in. It was a really nice place and they had live jazz. We sat at the bar and started talking to two guys. They were really cool. One of them was called Kevin. He said lived in the States for about 10 years.
This is the film of the band I took before a staff member came and said "no cameras". As we were walking out I saw a big no camera sign and I also realized why we could even get in in the first place. It was because we had gone in the back way. If we'd gone in the front we'd have been rejected for sure.
We tried going to another club after this - but got turned away for inadequate footwear and a lack of ID. Which is fair enough.
We watched some skateboarders in the street and I looked in the free magazine we'd got at Brown Sugar and I saw that there was a bar nearby called The Tavern. I felt sure we wouldn’t be rejected from a bar called The Tavern.
The Tavern wasn't too bad. They had car navigation screens all along the bar. We played pool.
Today we woke up to find a lake in our room. There is water dripping from the air conditioner. We slept in and then went out to find some food. First we had some delicious fruit. Then we went to the same place that we ate at last night. They had an amazing buffet. Then we found a cool little cafe and had ice coffee. We walked around a bit and saw lots of bikes. All the taxis in Taipei seem to be yellow. In the afternoon I did some editing. This is the TDES Taipei studio. In the evening we went to a night market. Mmmm fruit. Pineapple.Cat. We saw a lot of bars that looked like they were for Japanese men. But we didn't come across any non-dodgy looking places, so we went home.
Watch today's show at YouTube. Going to Canada 2007 Day 1: Kutchan to Taipei
On the way to the airport we stopped to film a piano. If you've ever been from New Chitose airport to Niseko by bus, you've probably visited these toilets. There's a piano playing by itself right by the doors going into the toilets.
We left the car at a place near the airport. It only cost 7000 yen to park it there for 6 months. So cheap!
We got on the plane OK. Every time I travel I think I have everything sorted but a new problem presents itself. This time I found there was a new law that means you can't take bottles with more than 100 mils of liquid inside them onto the plane. This would have been handy to know before we checked our bags in. Oh well, they were nice and let us check in the bottles separately. The immigration officer told me to take care because it was hot in Taiwan. I found two mistakes on the sign near at the boarding gate. There was no window where we were sitting. Bummer. We hope to make your flight more comfortable and enjoyable. Please call (?) us at any time should you require assistance. Thank you.
As usual, the in flight magazines were full of silly things like this bracelet which “continually emits negative ions found in forests”.
We flew China Airlines. The food was pretty good. And the passenger next to me was cool. The flight took about 4 hours. When we landed they said the temperature was 45 degrees outside. Wow.
We changed some money and then took a bus from the airport to Taipei Main Station. It cost 125 dollars each and took about an hour.
I had thought of couch surfing in Taipei but I couldn't find anywhere to stay in time - so I ended up booking a hostel called Happy Family.
It's really cheap - only 650 dollars a night. The condition of the place pretty much reflects the price. But it's not that bad and the owner is friendly.
After dumping our bags, we went out to look for food.
Taipei looks pretty similar to Japan. With some differences of course. People drive on the right side of the road and there are a lot of motorbikes or scooters. And they don't stop when pedestrians are crossing which really freaked me out at first. The little green man walks which is cute.
We found a great place eat. The food was in plastic bags but it was really good. There seems to be a lot of people studying English in Taipei.
We had a bit of trouble communicating at the restaurant so after dinner we decided to go and buy a phrase book.
Then we walked around for a while trying to find a bar but we couldn't find anything and we were pretty tired anyway so we called it a night and went back to happy family.
The Daily English Show is the world's first daily online English language show. Produced by studio tdes and presented by Sarah - a New Zealander currently based in Auckland, New Zealand.
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