Adventure Ken

The mom trip update 2

2009-02-17T02:08:00.002-05:00

So we've been in Amritsar in Punjab for a day now and we went to the Golden Temple which was amazing. The train ride here was very long from Varinassi, we got on the train at 09:30 in the morning and arrived here at around 11:30 the next day. Mom is thinking twice about wanting to go to ride a lower-class train because I think 2AC is low enough for her tastes lol. The train itself wasn't bad except for the older couple across from us who perpetually Burped and farted.

Some time in the morning between 07:30 and 10:30 my mobile phone which Sunil had given me to use went missing so we had to go the police station and make a report for insurance purposes and to cancel the SIM card so we can get the telephone company to reissue another card. The police were a little abrassive at first and there was some serious language barrier problems. After a while I got frustrated and just phoned Sunil on the police officers mobile and he told them everything in Hindi. From that point on they were more than happy to help us and even brought us soda and chai tea.

The hotel we planned on staying at was the Lucky Guest House but when we arrived it was under construction and would have been too loud and annoying so we are staying at the RS Residency and it's pretty nice. The hotel was pretty loud the first night due to a wedding but after complaining we moved rooms and everything is working out well.

So after spending a morning wandering around the Golden Temple we were walking towards the hotel and a place to get lunch when mom took a dive on the road and scrapped up her knee and hand a little bit. She twisted her ankle a little and was a tad sore, but other than that it was ok. She's a little stiff but generally in good shape.

Yesterday afternoon we went to that Mata Temple (AKA Cave Temple) which was kind of odd, you had to crawl through this cave and then walk through these water hallway things, it's sort of difficult to describe but was sort of interesting. Then we headed back towards the old city and stopped in this deary beer bar and mom felt all uncomfortable because she was probably the only woman who has ever been in there. So after 6 beers she didn't feel so upset about it anymore, or her sore foot for that matter.

We've been living it up with great food and room service and having a pretty good time here, mom keeps randomly crying over grams and dad etc, but other than that things are good. Oh god she's crying right now as I type this.

Anyways, just checking emails and stuff now I'm heading off to wander around for a while. Still haven't managed to lose mom yet... Damn :)

The Mom Update

2009-02-13T08:18:00.002-05:00

Dictated by Mom, typed by me...

We are having a great time in Varinassi and we went to the burning ghats and all the other ghats and saw a whole bunch of interesting stuff. There was a monkey that came in our room while we were in it and then ran out. And a lizard that is living behind a painting that makes it hard for me to sleep. And the small markets are crazy full of small streets and lots of cows in a maze, but not too much stuff I want to buy.

Hi everyone, I miss you, heading to next city (Amritsar) in the morning. I got happy birthday ken written in Hindi.
Ok That's it, love you all.

--
Ken now ...
So that's about it, we've been laying around the Hotel Alka in Varinassi with a beautiful view, it's a nice area for 3-4 days to just kick back and relax. Enjoying it but on that rail line again tomorrow. Won't be with Sarah for Valentines day, feeling a bit bad about it, but it seems I'm never in a relationship or with that person on my Birthday anyway. lol. Looking forward to seeing the Golden Temple in Amritsar and then doing some last minute things in Delhi with Sunil.

Check in again in a few days.

In Agra

2009-02-05T23:05:00.002-05:00

So mom and I are in Agra for another 24 hours or so. Everything started off well then I ended up getting sick and was layed up in Agra so that sucked pretty bad. Unfortunately the Taj Mahal is closed on Friday's so we got the gates today and found them to be locked by the police.

But tomorrow we were scheduled to depart at 0600 but I had sunil cancel the train so we can see the Taj Mahal in the morning then take a train out a couple of hours later. A bit of a rush but these things happen!

Tomorrow starts a two day Freemason convention which I am looking forward to!

Leaving for India Tomorrow

2009-01-30T18:52:00.003-05:00

So I'm officially on vacation now!

I'll be heading to the airport tomorrow and I'll be in India for 3 weeks.

Areas I'll be visiting: Delhi, Agra, Varinassi, Amritsar

Looking forward to dragging my mom through countless markets and taking hundreds of stupid photographs!

1 Week!

2009-01-25T14:52:00.001-05:00

So 1 week from today I will be somewhere between England and Bahrain en-route to India.

woo hoo

Indian Visa

2009-01-02T23:49:00.002-05:00

Woo Hoo.

Went down to the Consulate office for India in Vancouver (325 Howe Street), got my 6 month multiple entry tourist visa.

Yippee.

I'll be back in India in a mere 4.5 weeks. Crazy :p

Happy New Years

2008-12-31T17:17:00.001-05:00

Happy New Years Everyone!

=)

Vacation Scheduled

2008-12-15T16:42:00.001-05:00

Scheduled Vacation is on the horizon.

Yep, I'm hitting the road again, though for a much shorter time. Where you might ask?

It's off to Northern areas of India for 3 weeks in February.

Really looking forward to it, the count down is on.

Additionally, I have a much better camera than I had last time I was in India so I'm really looking forward to putting my Digitel SLR in to action.

Funny thing about a travel blog... it's pretty boring when you aren't traveling. Sorry for that, perhaps it'll get better in February. :)

Ken

L'Atlas de notre monde

2008-10-18T14:46:00.005-04:00

The other day I got a book in the mail.

But not just any book, a special book.

Why?

Because it contains a picture that I took of lake Nasser in Egypt!

I speak like 45 words of french, 5 of those are bad ones, but here I am with a published photo in l'atlas de notre monde (isbn 978-2-7644-0857-5).... Flip to page 111 and you see my picture of lake Nasser -- if you got to near the end of the book there is a contributions page with my name in print ;)

So it's only 2x3 inches in size but hey I got a free book out of the deal :)

Out of interest, I actually have photos in several magazines, travel brochures, and educational books, but this is the first one I've got a hard copy of at home.

Happy Thanksgiving

2008-10-14T10:57:00.002-04:00

I drove up to Prince George to visit my buddy Shawn and Raquelle for the Thanksgiving long weekend. Excellent weekend, despite the long long long drive.

Other than that it's pretty much the same old same old going on here. Working, Studying...

BUT -- Expected vacation in February!

The First Leaf

2008-09-18T23:16:00.001-04:00

The First Leaf
Originally uploaded by kden604.

Well here it is, the beginning of the end.

I was down working in Yaletown today and after about 30 minutes away from my car I come back to see this. Yes, it's the first red fall leaf that has fallen on my car this year.

Winter will be here soon... And what was I thinking, Prince George for Thanksgiving to visit S&R... I swear if it snows I'm not going to be a happy camper.

What's new here?

Not too much, working, studying, trying to get a trip lined up for early next year.

Score on Gas

2008-08-20T10:13:00.003-04:00

So last night I was coming home from fixing a computer for someone when I pulled over to a Chevron station who was listed at $136.9/litre. This was about 3 cents cheaper than most places already but the big surprise was still to come.

So I step out of the car and put in my credit card, and then I go to hit the gas type button and the regular is listed at $1.229/litre.

So I'm pretty happy about the whole "cheap" gas thing last night considering it's been hovering around $1.40/litre for ages now. I guess someone screwed up when they programmed the gas price, but honestly even at $1.22 we're still getting raped.

Google Calendar and Palm Pilots

2008-08-17T12:04:00.003-04:00

So yesterday I was digging around through a few boxes and I stumbled upon my PalmOne LifeDrive again. It's a Palm Pilot with WiFi on it and a 4GB harddrive, plus an SD Card to download pictures from your camera, or just expand the storage further.

So I formatted the LifeDrive and put it back to it's factory state again, updated the PalmOS, and then thought it would be cool if I could sync the thing to my Google Calendar.

I'm a huge fan of Google Calendar because of it's easy to use interface, notifications, sharing, invites and the SMS's and daily morning e-mails. But one thing I was missing was the ability to jot down events, times, and info and have it reflected on Google.

So I started a web search and there seems to be a couple ways to go about doing this. First, there is a website called GooSync which pretty much does everything I want, however if you have more than one calendar you have to sign up for the premium account. So as long as you have only one calendar it's a great option, I have about 4.

So next idea is the CompanionLink for Google application which after a few hiccups in the configuration worked out beautifully. This program runs about 30 dollars but has a free trial. The one problem I had was when I sync'd I started to get many many duplicate events in my calendar. This really pissed me off because trying to go delete about 400 bogus events was time consuming. There seems to be a little bit of a glitch if you setup the default calendar where downloaded events get set as unfiled in Palm Desktop causing the next sync to upload those events as new events on your Web Based calendar.

So the work around I did was create yet another Bogus calendar, set that as the default and the rest of them worked just fine from that point on. So I'm quite happy with the way it all worked out and one thing that I was surprised about was the way it actually updates your contacts on Gmail to reflect your Palm address book. How sweet is that!

We're on the board!

2008-08-16T12:21:00.003-04:00

Hey,

I woke up this morning to see that Canada is finally on the medal board. From zero yesterday to 1 Gold, 1 Silver, 1 Bronze at Beijing. Which puts us at 25/55 for country standings lol.

What's Up?

2008-07-30T10:08:00.001-04:00

My dirty little Yaris
Originally uploaded by kden604.

So these past few weeks have been quite a busy time. For those who might not know, I was recently hired by a small Telecom business who install business telephone systems and newer VoIP systems.

I've been there about three weeks now and I'm really enjoying the work, despite the impressive amount of technical information I have to absorb in a short period of time.

A large part of the job is mobile and at many different sites and business throughout the lower mainland so I went out and bought a new car.

For the first few months of 2008 I was driving and old beater, a 1989 Caprice which ran well, but cost me a fortune with these sky rocketing gas prices. So I've upgraded to a 2008 Yaris Hatchback, which supposedly gets about 50mpg on the highway!

Grams is still in the hospital, but the brace is off her leg and she is working daily at rehab trying to get walking and moving around again.

My friend Darryl turned in to a Civi last week, and my buddy Ralph from The Pas is now earning the big bucks with the oil boomers out in the Fort McMurray area.

This past weekend I took a drive with my parents up to Squamish more to just try out my new car than anything else. It's been years since I had passed through that way and it's growing like a weed, with most of the chain stores now moved in. Too bad it was the wrong time of the year to see the Eagles down the road in Brackendale but we still enjoyed the day out of the city.

So I'm off to work (yes, it still sounds weird)...

Hanging out in the sun

2008-06-29T12:50:00.002-04:00

Grams in the shade
Originally uploaded by kden604.

So my Grandmother (Grams) has been in the hospital for quite a few weeks now with a long recuperation time after her second knee surgery.

Yesterday the sun was shining and it was absolutely beautiful outside so we dragged her wheelchair and IV out for a road trip around the hospital grounds.

I thought this picture was rather amusing because she took my hat and sun glasses.

Interesting Read for Backpackers

2008-06-22T14:10:00.004-04:00

Today I was browsing through my RSS feeds and came across a few that haven't been updated in a while. One that I frequently read while I was in the military (counting down the days) was "Where are you, eric liu?", he hadn't updated his site since mid 2006 so I decided to fire him a comment and see how he is doing. For the record, his site was one that helped inspire my whole adventure.

As most people who have been away for quite some time know, adjusting to the normal life again takes some time and he mentioned an interesting study that was published regarding the packpackers culture by Christina Anderskov.

It's a look at backpackers and what they are all about in one of the very few somewhat scientific studies you can find on the subject. I have browsed roughly half of the webpage and find it extremely informative and interesting.

Firefox 3.0 Download Day

2008-06-17T18:51:00.002-04:00

For those of you who didn't know already, it's Firefox v3.0 Download day. Firefox has long been my favourite web browser and is probably the best one on the market today. They are releasing version 3 and they are trying to set a world record for the amount of downloads in a single day.

So upgrade your firefox or install it for the first time from their spread firefox headquarters. You can see a cool map with the current statistics on downloads. Right now it's just shy of 2 million downloads today.

Lobster Night

2008-06-16T13:32:00.003-04:00

Lobster Night
Originally uploaded by kden604.

Last night was Lobster night at my parents home. I don't eat the things myself, on account of being allergic to seafood. But wow, look at these things.

They are about 6-7 Lbs and were on special at T&T (Asian Supermarket) for Fathers Day at $6.99/lb.

If you want to see more pictures of Lobsters you can check out the other 24 photos I took on my flickr page.

Don't forget to learn how to do the secret Lobster Sleeper Hold before doing battle with these beasts.

The Dog Came Back

2008-05-15T09:00:00.000-04:00

After all the time it took to stick stamps all over the dog the post office wouldn't accept him. Oh well, I guess we're stuck with the little bastard.

Or are we?

(Evil Laugh)

Prince George: Treasure Trove Casino

2008-05-03T01:24:00.004-04:00

Shawn and I were going out of our minds with boredum this evening so we decided to head out for a bit. We went to the mall, wandered around aimlessly and then on our way back home made a quick detour to the Treasure Trove Casino.

I withdrew a $50 from the ATM which had a ridiculous service fee of $1.75 and we proceeded to wander around. Honestly we weren't there to be gamblers, we were just bored and neither of us had stepped foot in the place before.

So we played a cheap slots and both of us were down. After about 30-40 minutes and down about 30-40 dollars we were on our way out the door when I decided to throw my last $10 in to a $0.25 machine. I kept hitting max bet which was $0.75 per play and on the second last hit before I would have lost it all I got three full bars across.

So 45 minutes in the Casino left me down $2.75 (most of which was the ATM service fee).

The Casino in general is nothing special, it's mainly slot machines with two texas hold'em tables and a variety of other table games (about 12-15 tables in total).

The Thing With Canada

2008-05-02T00:16:00.004-04:00

I'll tell you something that really "grinds my gears" (Peter Griffin) is the fact I can go on to eBay and purchase an AC Power Adapter for my laptop from Hong Kong, including shipping for $26 but I cannot buy it in my own country for less than $100-130.

Is it greed?

I am buying the exact same OEM part, new for 1/5th of the price I can get it in Canada. There is something seriously wrong with this picture.

Bengie The Dog Gets A Haircut

2008-04-26T14:26:00.001-04:00

Bengie The Dog
Originally uploaded by kden604.

So you might recall seeing pictures of this dog previously on the blog, or perhaps back at my flickr page.

He's a scruffy annoying dog who doesn't listen well and frequently forgets that outside is where the bathroom is found.

Yesterday he went in to Total Pet and got his hair clipped and I have to admit that despite the huge looking forehead he now has, he looks pretty darn good. You might almost say cute.

Prince George, BC, Canada

2008-04-25T23:29:00.000-04:00

As most of my readers probably know already, after I returned back to Canada from my year long vacation I headed up to Prince George, BC, Canada.

I have some wonderful friends up there who opened their home to me while I was getting back on my feet after decimating my entire savings.

I got up there in the middle of January 2008 and ended up leaving in April 2008. Though it was nice staying with friends I can't say that I really enjoyed my time there.

There isn't a lot of IT industry which is my primary background and I found myself installing security, cable and communications infrastructure in new homes. Unfortunately things didn't work out with that job and I ended up quiting around two months after I started. After hearing about some family problems down south in Vancouver and finding work difficult I decided to make the move back to Vancouver.

Below are a few pages, mostly related to restaurants while I was in Prince George. I found the service industry severely lacking and wanted to try and get the point across to the city of Prince George by drawing some attention to the fact. I find that people get so used to the poor treatment that they after some time fail to realize the substandard service because they think it has become normal.

Prince George: Vaisakhi

2008-04-19T16:43:00.002-04:00

Vaisakhi - Parade
Originally uploaded by kden604.

Today I attended the parade and festival celebrating Vaisakhi for the Sikh faith. I've posted more pictures on my flickr page with the parade pictures.

Despite the recent cold snap in weather there were several hundred parade participants who braved the -10C to celebrate Vaisakhi. Everyone gathered after the parade at the CN Centre parking lot where lots of food and hot beverages were served out.

There was quite a few public speakers and a really excellent explanation of what exactly Vaisakhi is and a summary of the creation of Khalsa.

I had the opportunity to speak to several of the local Sikh gentlemen who not only expanded on the speech but told me a great deal about politics in regards to the temples.

Down south in Surrey you might have heard about how some Sikh members had photographs displayed in an idolizing manner to some men allegedly connected with the Air India bombing. This has caused some strained relations between some political figures who want to disassociate themselves with that aspect of the festival.

If you speak to the average Sikh however I think you will find that there is no support of violence or malice held to anyone and that any true Sikh who takes their spirituality and religion to heart wouldn't be a part of any violent act against any person.

I had a really enjoyable time at the festival and despite the cold weather it was quite a good turn out of people though I thought that there was an under representation of non-Sikh's at the festivities.

I think these type of events are good to help people understand other religions and help build that multicultural family that is Canada.