1) It's cheap: £650 for two one-way tickets to Vancouver isn't bad. We chose this airline largely so we could evaluate whether it was even remotely tolerable, so our posse can come visit us as cheaply as possible. But even with the upgrade to Premium Economy it's still good, and the comfy seats make the nine hours quite liveable.
2) You get a bunch of films with no breaks, and a few radio channels with no guide. Not that this matters, since in-flight magazines only ever annoy me.
3) The food's not bad - by airline standards.(1)
Facts about flying from London to Vancouver:
1) You get several hours' gorgeous overview of the Arctic and Northern Canada. The Arctic in particular is indescribable. Take a look:
2) What more do you want?
There isn't much to say about the customs process. After an initial confusion caused by me using the word 'immigrate' when I should have said 'here on a work permit', we got into a line, saw someone, got stamped in numerous tricky-to-reach places, and then shelled out $300 for our work permits. I wish I could make this more dramatic, but - I can't. We were approved as trustworthy working visitors and in a taxi on the way to the realtor within two hours of landing. Can't say fairer than that.
Tell a lie, there was a hiccup, in classifying my job. For some reason someone had seen fit to put "pipeline programmer" as my job description. This is fine in that yes, technically I will be programming a tools pipeline at Radical, but to the nonspecialist it sounds like I'll be working in the oilfields, and it certainly wasn't listed in the (magnificently complete in all other ways) Canadian Government Directory Of Jobs. Ah, the dangers of having a dropdown box instead of a free text field! Eventually we settled on "Computer Programmer" and the crisis was averted.
Now we progress to Bruce Ward Realty. 'Realty' is an odd word, an American creation based on 'real estate' (another odd word). We have estate agents, they have realtors. I can't get my head around that word amongst all Americanisms. Anyway. We'd been dealing over email with Lynn in their rental department for several weeks, and she had the keys for our new place ready and waiting for us. Lynn is bonkers, in the nicest possible way. Tall, and bonkers. Do you think it's the water?
We got the keys and waited outside for a taxi. It ticked past five o'clock. And the temperature plummetted. Apparently, like the daylight, the natural heat of Vancouver is switched off once the working day is over. Even I got cold, and I'm pretty much immune to normal temperature lows.
We shivered our taxi-borne way to our apartment. We live in 'The Electra' at 989 Nelson Street. I'd give you the apartment number but you are not ready for such knowledge; of this man shall know nothing, etc.(2) The apartment, and apartment-block life, has enough to it to justify an entire entry sometime soon, so for now I'll just say: it's compact but it's cuddly, it has great views, and we like it.
We didn't do much on Wednesday evening. Too tired to explore, too hungry to care what we ate, we trogged a block to the 7-11 opposite the hotel where we stayed in September, raided it for snack food (I had two burritos... aren't they some kind of small mule?) and Sarah had bagels, and then we conked out at about 8pm. Welcome to Canada... zzzzzz.
(1) Carter USM, Airplane Fast Food
(2) Max Ernst's 1923 painting about alchemy
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