East, South, North, West

Two or three weeks ago my friend Kassie texted me early in the morn' asking if I wanted to go for a ride to Victoria, in my boredom I promptly answered "When do we leave?!". She didn't respond all day and I figured it was because she left without me which would have been very unlike Kassie. I was mad though and went downtown to sink my misery with a falafel platter at The Thirsty Camel (best falafels ever). On the way home I got a text from Kassie that said "I just saw you, come to my work". So she was working the whole time. I made some quick calls and she gave me a ride to downtown Victoria, Johnson and Douglas. We went our seperate ways, her driving in one direction, me getting out of the car and wandering down the street in another direction. My destination was Il Terrazo where an old friend, Ali, worked. Ali and I know each other from crazy hazy Perth days. At Il Terrazo she cooked for me, I ate, we drank and then we left to bus to her boyfriend's work. We drank some more, then we cabbed 15 or 20 minutes into Sooke, THEN we walked 45 minutes further into Sooke and finally arrived at her lovely house in the country. We stayed up all night drinking, Ali made beautiful music and we all slept on her living-room floor and the next morning we hitchhiked back downtown. I rode in the back of an open truck, so fun.

I decided I like Sooke. A chef at school recently encouraged me to apply at the Sooke Harbour House. Sooke Harbour House is a very cool resort, the onsite restaurant operates as organically as a restaurant can, growing their own produce on site and changing the menu regularly to encourage freshness. You all know where this is going. If I get the position the likelihood of me returning to VIU for the second year is not very likelihood at all.

Looking for a place for rent for March plus still looking for a job, Nanaimo is beautiful, but weak, very weak. The economy here is like a delicious salted cracker.

I went to Mexico on the weekend for my Mom's wedding. It was really nice, congratulations Glenn and Tracy McDougall.


















My trip was a little bit zany but ultimately really smooth and painless, except for my left ear which is still echoing from the plane descent. I took a flight out of Nanaimo to Vancouver where I met up with Alex, we had a little food and chatted it up really quick and he kindly got me back to the airport just in time to board, very comfy. From there I flew to Toronto, I slept most of it I think, I had a quick layover and took off to Cancun. I arrived there at 2pm and was at the resort by 3pm, and the wedding started at 4pm. So that was kinda bewildering in my state of mind but I manned through it, for about 6 hours and then I passed out like not so much of a man. The next day we went to Xel Ha which is a cool snorkeling park, you rent some gear and then just slide into this lagoon and check out all the colourful fishies. There was a jumping cliff and a lazy river. That night we went to a restaurant on the resort and I had swordfish carpaccio which was not carpaccio 'cause it was cooked, served with diced watermelon and a balsamic reduction. I had a green apple crab bisque that was really nice, and then I had a suuuuuuuper delicious tuna filet steamed inside a banana-leaf served with some orange and ginger spongecake, so amazing. I had chocolate mousse and a white Russian for dessert, then Emily and Greg and a bunch of my mom's friends got drunk in the calm of the ocean breeze. On Sunday I left. I don't wanna talk about my trip back 'cause it started horribly, but ended with running into a friend on the ferry and sharing a sunny afternoon being calmly rocked back and forth by mother ocean.













...I got another tattoo. No one likes my knife but everyone likes this new one, I like them both so eff you world, eff, you.