Freezing Rain

When the natives started talking about freezing rain, and acting all uppity about it, I just thought, oh... it's going to be cold and rainy, and worse, cold rain drops, I'll stay in the bar tonight then.
I didn't realise that it actually meant that the rain drops were freezing... by this I mean most rain hits a surface and splash up breaking apart. Not these, they hit a surface and stop dead.... frozen. It's the weirdest thing.

Everything is covered in a layer of ice. It looks like somebody came into town and covered everything in wax, leaves, layer of ice... cars, layer of ice.... branches layer of ice - all the way around, top and bottom. It's bizarre.

Jax's Birthday

It was Jax's birthday celebrations last night, they were meeting at 42nd Street for cocktails and then onward. Jax is a programmer from Geordie land who's worked for a few big companies, including EA (I think) in Vancouver.

I finished clearing up the house and washing, and was sat watching Tenacious D on TV, oh and Heroes. I wasn't feeling too well, got flu. However after some Neo Citran (Lemsip) and a rest it got to about 7:30 and I figured I would head out and have a few drinks. I hadn't eaten, and couldn't really face another microwave curry.

Anyway met up with them and had a Key Lime Pie Martini (which is as good as it sounds), then we moved on the The Olde Dublin pub.
What an amazing place, really good atmosphere, really good vibe, very much like a popular decent pub in England... the way they used to be, before they became posh wine/sports bars or poxy 'no music' WheatherSpoons. Proper.

The music was loud and a live band came on from Halifax, did some cool tunes including Sweet Child :), also Jazz Hands by the Scissor Sisters was played, and jazz hands was performed... by me... and me alone :(... ;)

For the first time I had Oysters and Lobster and it was awesome. A whole fresh lobster cost me just $29 CDN.

Matt took a picture on his iPhone as he was impressed by it's arrangement, considering this was just a pub.

Definitely a good place I'll try to head to more often. Guinness unfortunately is expensive however at $7.50.
Lots of people from work turned up and it was a different bunch to whom I normally hang out with, so it was nice to get to know them also.

Dooly's Members Night

It was Dooly's members night last night. Free pool all night, free snacks and prizes given out.
I'm a member now and I spend most of my Island life there, so I know quite a few people now.
We went there straight after work, I thought more people from work would go actually, and it was a slow start, but by 9pm the place was packed and we had some good games.
I'm not sure what happened, I wore my contact lenses, and my game of pool shot through the roof... I was on like a 7 or 8 win streak!
Took the camera and got photos of people below.

That's Bob on the left, and playing Viabhav on the right. I work with both of them,though not currently on any projects with them, they're both programmers. Bob as you know loaned me his chair and gave me a router, he's English, Viabhav (pronounced VeeBoo) is from Bombay, India, a very pleasant bloke.
This is JR, one of the testers from Sculpin. Sculpin is like a sister company that tests games - not just ours. But they're right next door in the Atlantic Technology Centre, so it' really easy to get them to test and report bugs.
JR played pool, drank shots and then at about 11pm went back to work because there's a big project needing finishing. The other day he did 25 hours straight games testing!!


Another tester from Scuplin, Ryan. I only met him last night... he's a top bloke ;)

This is the Dooly's barmaids. Nicole, Erica and Liz. I don't know why, but JR jumped behind the bar for some reason.... hmm, I wonder why?

The bar...

Edge Magazine

Well my drinking continued into Saturday with a guy from Edge magazine who is in town doing interviews with the games companies here. They are going to do an article on why PEI had so many companies.
Other Ocean took him out for chips and drinks, and we got plastered. He was an English bloke so could quote Red Dwarf :)
The difference this time was that all the drinks and snacks were paid for by the company.
They are here an interviewing for the article today and tomorrow.
So keep a look out, I'll notify you on the blog when it comes out, could be an interesting read.

The snow came down in torrent last night - I was oblivious. Woke up this morning to find the whole place back to the way it was when I first got here 3 weeks ago.

hmph... I've just discovered that next door has a dog. This house has like an attached granny flat to it, and someone else lives there. It's been kicking off this evening.

Anyway, James has loaned me Streetfighter 4 on the 360 to test the NTSC compatibility with my PAL xbox. Apparently, although the 360 is region encoded, it's up to the developer to utilise this function... so far Bioshock worked, and hopefully SF4 will too... HadUUUUUKan!

Beer!

Man....

It's cack and boring being in an empty house, with one gaming chair, and a TV. The laptop is a pain to use, hunched over the 'foot stand', and my Xbox doesn't work with the power here.
Trying to get a new power supply from eBay.
Cannot wait until my stuff arrives!!

Beer is encroaching back into my life... good times, however beer is encroaching back into my life... bad times!

After work, it seems pretty grim to head home and sit in an empty room, so on Tuesday I went to Doolys for a quick sharp half. Paul, who looks like Charlton Heston and Gordon (not my boss, but an old bloke) were there and we were discussing the different pool rules. They seemed intrigued by the 'Northern ' up our way' UK rules', so gave it a try.
So we played pool, drank beer and I crawled home at 1:30am.

Wednesday, Matt sends an MSN message saying that Churchills, the pub, the 'British' pub, is curry night. This happens but once a week. So we head there for a curry. The place was jammed, and we had to wait well over an hour before we were seated. Stella costs $7.50!!!!
Have no choice but to give in to Molson soon:(
Anyway Viabhav (I think that's how you spell it :) ), another Indian guy from work turns up with his friends. So you've got the 3 Asian guys in Charlottetown, all in craving a good curry.
Well.... There once as an Indian place apparently, but it's gone now, so this is the 'only place to get a curry'. And not just any curry according to locals and immigrants alike... a traditional 'British' curry... because apparently that's what we are all about in the UK... beer and curry... I thought it was Fish n' Chips... but anyway...

The choice then.... potato skins and other random fried stuff for starters...
Korma, Madras or Tikka Masala. The good thing was that it was 2 for 1, so only cost about 11 bucks. The bad thing was that for less than 11 bucks I could have bought some Uncle Bens and had a better time. It was full of sharp tomato, and very sweet.

The best you're going to get 'on the island'.... so I cannot wait for my spices and wife to arrive :)
Matt has already been invited to get his arse round as soon as the spices arrive and make a chicken curry... proper.

Then last night I head to the bank to see about getting a Visa card. You see you 'need' one here. Sadly the bank charges, just to have an account and use it ($12.95 per month) to have unlimited transactions. The minimum was $3.95 per month, and that meant you can do 10 transactions... so getting money from the wall is a transaction, and so is purchasing food from the grocer's say.
So if you go to the super market, buy stuff, then realised you forgot milk, go back and use your card again, that's 2 transactions gone. Once you've used your 10, it costs per transaction.
It's all very pantz, so I went for unlimited, however - the card is not Visa, and Switch/Maestro doesn't exist here. There's an equivalent, but not so abundant.
Anyway, I chose TD as my bank because they're open until 8pm, so I go there and... it's closed.
Due to storm.
There had been a downfall of snow during the day, about 4 inches at least in the town.
So I headed back and saw Doolys open, so popped in, for a quick sharp half.

Some Scottish bloke soon heads over, Rory, who knows my boss Gordon and starts buying me beer. Well... I rolled out at 11pm, sauntered back and watched American Idol.

Matt wants to go out tonight... 'oi vey' more beer!!

The alternative... sit in an empty room on a gaming chair, with no games console...

A word to anyone thinking of leaving your country for a new job. Send your stuff well before you leave and bring your wife and kid with you!!

Photos

Many of you don't know this, but if you click on ANY of the photos that I've posted it will enlarge to the full size version.Beware they are large and can take over 30 seconds to load befor eyou'll see it, but if you're interested in seeing more detail... there you go.

Jack Frost Festival 2009

So today was the final day of the Jack Frost Festival, held in Charlottetown. This is the 3rd or 4th year that they've done it.
It was really cold out, but the place was so enchanting that I stayed out looking around, fascinated by most of it, for over 3 hours.
I wished Hayden was here today, it really was a kids paradise, and I wanted to play on some of the things.... couldn't by myself - he's a great excuse to dick about :)
Kath would have marvelled at it all too.
Well I can share what I saw here in my blog anyway. I have taken videos and will upload them during the week to come.
I knew it was going to be one of those things you don't get to experience everyday when I walked into the entrance...


A massive wall of snow, with a giant welcome message carved into it was just the start...

I'd been told by the ice sculpting guy that they actually created most of the snow here, using a snow machine.
This stuff has to be jumped up and down on the compact it enough to carve, otherwise it'll just break and fluff away like the stuff I showed you in the 'white outs', that's what snow is like here until the temperature rises... like talc!
And, as we all know, as soon as you scrape up snow to make a snow man, you immediately grab all the mud up with it, creating a dirty brown mess.
Not here...
Another advantage of the created snow is that it has a slight blue hue to it, making the really big snow sculptures look and feel even more magical!
Plus, there just wasn't enough snow :)


There were a ton of people there and I wondered around taking tons of pictures. It was hard to narrow them down to the few that I have here in the post.

One of the highlights was this playground, completely made of snow. A climbing wall, tunnels, slides...

... a really tall bloke...

I really wanted a go on this slide. When I walked around this harbour two weeks ago I saw a huge digger piling up a mountain of snow, at the time I had no idea that it was building this giant slide, one of many. The actual slide (the groove) is made of ice bricks, implanted into the snow hill. I will bring my waterproofs next year and I'll have Hayden with me as an excuse to go on it :)

This tube ride also was very fast...

There were certain events going on throughout the day. At 4:00pm, The Flying Canucks started their show, doing snowboarding and ski ramp jumps and trampolining, to timing and music. It was short, but pretty good. I have some video which I will link to YouTube if you click the image. Check back later in the week when I've done this.
Now to the really cool works of art. There was a competition going on for big snow sculptures. These were big, well over my height.

This was like the snow queen from Narnia...

This was wicked. It was entitled 'Snow Angels'. It's difficult to pick out the amount of detail when everything is so white, but that's the devil riding on top, full on 'rawk' tongue, holding a snow flake. I guess Hell froze over then!

This was carved into one of the big walls....

Surf's up big kahuna!

During the day there were a bunch of guys doing ice sculptures. I spent ages sat there watching them. I'm going to try one next year. I need some tools and a chainsaw :)

I managed to snap this as the guy started. If you look closely, you can see that he has drawn an outline of what he's going to carve. In case you can't see it, it's a wolf howling upward.

This is it about 2 hours later...

He said it was his first ice sculpture.

This bloke did that big face that was carved into the wall above, and was doing something similar here. A woman's face with hair blowing back, some type of mermaid or snow maiden.

High detail on the face an hour or so later

They made this 'crystal' ball out of ice. Earlier in the day it was really clear, but the guy was telling me that as the temperature gets warmer, the ice starts to crack. It didn't feel warm!

It actually looks quite cool however like this.

Surprisingly they have the ice made for them. You can't just leave ice in a block outside over night... oh no. It will freeze in layers and the centre will be cloudy, like an ice cube.

This water is circulated so that the impurities stay at the top. It is frozen from the bottom up, and then the top layer (which is cloudy with impurities) is cut off, leaving a really clear piece of ice to carve.

Amazing what you learn!