P.O.D.

Post Olympic Depression

Sounds familiar to you? I'm sure from everybody who was in Vancouver to work for the Games are in on it. It's probably even worse living in Vancouver and feeling it. Even people across the country are probably feeling it.

I'm used to it - Everytime I finish one of my academic competitions, I have that post 'Jeux du Commerce' Depression that students across Québec feel as well - it's a competition that you prepare for almost a year beforehand and it's done, Poof!, within 4 days. And I've been going through that three times a year with Happening Marketing and HR Symposium throughout the year. Olympics, I've applied about 2 years ago, and after 3 weeks and a half, Poof!, it's gone. And it won't come back. As for JDC, I will be participating again next year, where they will be held in Ottawa. Heck, I even have Happening Marketing coming up at the end of March to look forward to - making this Post-Olympics depression easier on me, I believe.

I haven't been able to go back to work yet - Tomorrow is the big day. I'm seriously scared of going back, thinking I may have lost knowledge with my month of thinking only of which section the bathrooms are located, where the smoking section is (Gate 3 - Section 109), infobooth (Section 311 and 114), where the ATM is (Section 116), where the elevators are (you can't go to the north ones in Section 308, but you must go to the ones at 319), Which sections you can't access and have to do the loop (Sorry, sections 105 to 101, sucks to be you, you can proceed to bitch at me now), how to get to Beatie street, Georgia, Granville and where the Olympic superstore is, how to access the SkyTrain the fastest from the arena and lastly hear compliments about my eyes pretty much constantly - which was nice from all the repetitive questions. But, I unfortunately will not be getting anymore questions about the Sections, or any compliments, but more about ''Gen, can you do this T1 for me before the end of the day? Thanks'' and me calling the government ''Hi, I need information about a client of ours, I'm calling from BDO Canada and my name is Genevieve, and the client's SIN # is _ _ _  _ _ _  _ _ _''. Although, don't get me wrong, I do love my job and the people! : )

So yes, I would take knowing a few sections by heart over doing 1o personal tax returns in a day, or even a gigantic one within 4 days (Thanks, person who put all their year's receipt in a shoe-box, you really thought you were getting away with it!)

But that's the reality. I'm back in Ottawa. I'm on my couch. About to go downtown with my blue coat (Yeah, kind of excites me) but it's the harsh reality of not going out to Granville tonight, or not attending a free concert at Granville Island or LiveCity either, not using my Volunteer accreditation & blue jacket for freeloading off stuff, or passing as a ''staff worker'' to get in somewhere, not singing Oh Canada on the Skytrain, not high-fiving tons of strangers on the street, not being asked questions from strangers about anything and everything in Vancouver when I'm in the streets with the blue jacket, even if I have no idea the answer (I guess I won't worry about that in Ottawa wearing the blue coat), of eating Pizza every second day because you have no car, and honestly, it's the easiest thing to split with your brother, to sit in the volunteer debrief room every morning with tons of strangers but who eventually became familiar faces and even some, very good friends, to go out every night and end up with some friendly strangers after the bar taking part in the most silliest things in the streets - mostly some screaming and cheering for Canada, to have about 15 new contacts in my phone - close to non with a last name and who will remain as those random friends I made in Vancouver, to buy expensive beer in Vancouver - whether it was at the bar (7 - 9$ each) or at the Liquor store (30$ for 12), to watch the fireworks and the fire shows at Robson Square that goes on each night to just working my shifts everyday - making friends with everybody in my section at the Hockey Games and seeing people so excited about hockey and the Olympics, I will really miss it.

And I'm not alone.

Some people are calling it post-podium depression. Which where they write why they think people are having this depression: Why is the sense of loss so profound in Vancouver? I think, in part, it's because the whole thing turned out far better than anyone expected.
Which I think is completely true. I was doubting the whole experience my first week. But now I'm embracing it. I've never seen such patriotism outside of Ottawa on Canada Day ever - and I think it even surpassed it! 


Over here, they mention: You eat dinner with it, you spend the night with it, you fall asleep in front of it. For the better part of a fortnight, you come to count on it, put your trust in it.
This seriously represents what I've been doing the past 3 weeks, when I would get home from volunteering (if that) I would turn on the TV, write my blog, then go to bed, with the TV on sleep for 30 minutes with CTV on. Never did I watch anything else if I had the chance.

And CTV is calling it the post-Olympic blues. Some people comparing it to after Christmas. 


Well, like I said, it can't be that bad. I do have parties lined up with friends this weekend and it'll make me remember why I love them so much and kind of started missing them by the end of my trip. Kinda guys. 


Well, tomorrow I'm going back to work. Wish me luck!

 

 

ONT vs BC

Now before I write my final words on the Olympics and perhaps not touch my blog for a while, I wanted to point out something just as experiencing BC / Vancouver, but for more than a week or a weekend. I basically became a resident of Surrey travelling to BC every single day.

Now I know we are Canada, but wow are we ever different from End to End, East to West and I’m sure South to North as well! But there are also similarities.

1)    The culture clearly differs. As we can see in Ottawa, we are very multicultural as well but it’s completely different in terms of nationalities.

2)    The Public Transportation. In Ottawa, I used to say the occasional thank you to the bus driver as I stepped out of the front door. In Vancouver, people scream Thank you from the back door, almost all the time! Also, they have their bus stops electronically up so if you’re from out of town, it’s easy to find where you are going. Downside of Vancouver: Some of their bus stops don’t have numbers or anything.

3)    The Streets. At first, I thought it was CRAZY to name all the streets ‘164^th avenue’ and ‘130^th street’. What? Were these people reall non-creative? No. They  were smart. They do this so people can situate themselves really easily, and people knew exactly which area of Surrey you were in when I would tell them.

4)    The bad ‘neighbourhoods’. You know when you live in Vanier, and you’re sorta embaressed so say ‘vanier’ while looking around a bit knowing that they might make fun of you, I realized where I was, Surrey, was the same thing! By the end of my stay, I would say Surrey while looking around and a bit rolling my eyes, becauses of the reactions I had gotten from people the whole week! Same same thing as Vanier or any other rough neighbourhoods.

5)    The Rain. People in BC are not phased at all by the rain, and will go out and do their regular thing as us in Ottawa seem to curl up in a ball and try to avoid anything that has to do with going outside.

6)    The Weather. Clearly, it was hot as hell over there. But I heard that had their warmest winter, but I think it’s usually along the same lines.

7)    The public transportation part 2 – The skytrain was very similar to the 95 in terms of people busting out the Oh Canada, but it was much more efficiently run.

8)    The French. They don’t give a shit! They either really don’t care, or hate it even. People were frustrated that it was at every Olympic venue in both official languages. Yeah sure, there wasn’t that many Québec people and the French from France were probably pretty happy, but at least we’re not in the States where they only have one language, and doesn’t say much about their culture and one-mindedness? It was funny, because at the GM Place they would annonce certain things in French first (i.e. a newly acquired gold medal) and I would cheer … but nobody else, until they heard it in english. Pff. I did have a few talks with anglophones in Vancouer that did realize that problem and were loving to hear my opinion on it. Kudos to you guys. It’s funny because in Ottawa, the anglophones totally respect french and even in circumstances would wish that they spoke it! Complete different end of the spectrum. People also were really amazed at how well I could speak english, some not even realizing I was french (whooaa!) but nobody even ever assumed we were franco-ontarians, just Québec right away. Except some Québecers, they would be the ones to point out our ontario out of us!

9)    The Alcohol. 30$ for a 12 of beer? Are you kidding me? For some reason in BC, their beer is really expensive. Hard alcohol is a bit more expensive, but wow. And it’s funny because you have the BC Liquor Store and privately owned Liquor Stores offering Beer and Wine as well. Clearly different than Ontario (Hard alcohol only dealt by the Ontario Government) and slightly different than Québec.

I’m sure I’ll think of more, later on. But there’s one thing that’s definitely the same: It’s the way we act for our Hockey Teams. The guys cheer the same way, people are just as crazy about hockey in Vancouver as it is in Ottawa or Montreal. I thought it was really cool to see that the atmostphere in a bar did not differ at all on a hockey night whether you are in the East of the West. Go Canada Go!

Also, all the Vancouverites are all having high hopes of the Stanley Cup now. I guess they see a direct correlation on the Gold from the Olympics and the Stanley Cup, but I feel like they are only setting themselves up for dissapointment, because let’s be honest, it is really hard to win the Stanley Cup. But I’ll be honest – it probably won’t be the Habs going to the finals, so all the power to them and to believe!

Monday - March 1st - Whistler

So we got into Whistler at about 7:45 am and then dragged all of our luggage to the Hotel we rented last minute - 150$ with tax and everything. It was really not bad, especially we met up with people who booked a room a while back and paid 298$/per night for just a really small room. It was perfect for my brother and I. So we get dressed and head for the slopes.

What an amazing day - I will have more pictures when my brother's camera gets back - but we did start out wiht a breakfast up top after a few runs, which was pretty amazing view. We heard about these free mountain tours - which we assumed it'd be older people giving us the tour - but went with it anyway. So we did that at 11:30 (oh and after doing a Boarder Cross run - it's so fun, I definitely would want to do that! hhehe) And they brought us all the way up in the Bowls. Now, I have never seen so much snow and openness. That's the thing, it's SO open I can't believe it.

We did one of the bigger and popular bowls where we had to hike up after a T-Bar (oh, I am no longer afraid of them) and so I have a pretty cool video of that.  Steph hiked up a bit to get really fresh Pow and it was pretty cool. We would stop a bit everywhere and they would explain where all the other Bowls were, where you had to hike to get to the more intense ones, and wow everything seemed really amazing. It's such a free-for-all!

We took the Peak-To-Peak at the end of the day to check it out, and skied on Whistler at the end of the day. We were dead tired by 3 pm so decided to call it a day. Although it took us quite a while to get all the way down, where the snow was getting very much like April-like snow. Kinda sucks, there was 0 snow in the village or anywhere around, kind of weird to experience!

At night we met these 2 groups in the hottub, and one of them were from Hull. We went to supper with them, then hit up Tommy's Africa for the 80's night. Everybody was fully dressed up for it - reminded me of JDC parties - but they were all SUPER snobby. I was really turned off by the ''locals'' attitude - like they were the cool kids in High School but I felt like they were all like.. dumb as shit.. No offense. It wasn't like JDC at all because I felt like the people were missing just, brains. I don't mean to be harsh towards the locals, but I realized that they all either serve, work in hotels, etc which yeah it is a sweet life, and I'd love to get a transfer of BDO there, but I started doubting them!

gay pride week at Whistler

Anyway, we went back, I woke up at 8:30 am to catch a bus to the airport, caught my plane at 2:30 and only got in Ottawa at 1 am.

 

Going over the Rockies in the Plane.

That was it! I'll keep posting a bit because I really want to make a post with all the main differences between BC and Ontario.

I'm back home now if you want to hang out! Haha!

Sunday - February 28th - Crosby SCORES!!!

So today, we go straight from where we were last night because we ended up staying up until 7 am and just passing out until 10 am - They were pretty nice and didn't mind letting us crash on the couch. We get to the Canada Hockey Place where Steph was able to sneak his way in by completely lying to everyone (Haha Just for you) and sat beside a camera, on a media box that they set up for those cameras, for the whole game. I, didn't have my pass back on time, and couldn't do the plan I had planned! Nooooo - I know, it was harsh. But I just went across the street to the Molson Canadian Hockey House -  but from the outside and met up with Judy, the girl that I spend watching the Swiss game with. She was there with her RCMP cousin so the three of us caught the game together.

It was a wild game - I don't have to go into details. I can tell you when Parise scored, the whole crowd went dead silent from cheering (since they were cheering loud from about 2 minutes left). I immediately saw downtown Vancouver all in fire from a riot I could see being caused if Canada would lose - and would ruin the whole feel-good image that the Olympics were getting in the past week. So I was really hoping for the sake of the Olympics, that wouldn't happen.

The entrance to the house.

It was 100$ to 200$ for a Day Pass at the Hockey House, and people were even scalping passes as well. 

Anyway, when we scored, everybody went nuts naturally. The party immediately started, and I'm sure it was the exact same in Ottawa - like people wrote on facebook, a mini-Canada Day/Sens Mile. I thought the same thing, but it was already like that each and every night, and even more on any Team Canada win nights.

Unfortunately, my brother and I were absolutely dead from the night before so we had to skip the whole downtown thing (we had done it about 9-10 times anyway) and head home to go pack because we had a 5:15 am train to take. We ended up going home and sleeping for a while, then taking a cab at 3 am to get downtown in time. It was a weird night. And we missed out - but hey, it's stuff like that you have to do if you want to go to WHISTLER!

Saturday - February 27th - Alberta House

So today we got up a bit late and I was quite hungover, and decided to contact Jean-Marc (our new Montreal friend) and Elodie to go out and enjoy our real last night in Vancouver.

So we did just that by meeting up at the Edgewater Casino, headed to McDonald's while Jean-Marc got tons of Free stuff at the Ahtlete Village (Oh and his Federov pass-hilarious), bought out Greyhound tickets for Whistler and then headed towards Granville once again. It was raining, but something was hilarious - There was TONS of people partying, and that's pretty standart here, but they were all in their MOST ridiculous outfits and the oldest boombox - blaring out a radio station all at the same time. So there's about 100 people with boomboxes, and people will signs of a Decentralized Dance Party. It was a lot of fun to see. Clearly, I lost the crew and went filming all of this.

 

  

 This guy was crazy on the guitar. Reminded me of a Guitar Hero character!

So we proceeded through Granville trying to figure out where we could go out - We knew that everywhere would be packed so I mentioned the bar I was at the night before - there was a DJ and a small dance area, decent prized alcohol compared to everywhere else, so let's do it. On the way there, we bump into the Alberta House and there was a good song playing so we decided to go in there instead. 

 

The DJ was okay - I mean, he could of been playing better music at first. The house basically closes at midnight, so towards the end he started playing all the classics (some on a remix) of the country songs. 

We met these young 'kids' I'll call them in line, they were 18, when we were coming in and had a few drinks wiht them, started a dancing circle and we were just crazy in general. Trying to have a good time, there was a few people cheering for Finland (They had just won the bronze) and a few ''cowboys''. I met these 2 boys that paid 3,000$ for their tickets to the final, which was pretty standard at this point! But wow. I didn't think it was worth that much - but yet again, we heard somebody paid 100,000$ for 4 tickets together in the 100's the day of. That is nuts my friends! Or maybe I'm too used to seeing tons of games, all the time...

 

 

Then we left a bit before 12 to go to the next bar, just around the corner, called Dix. It was a peanut bar, with peanuts absolutely everywhere, and drinks were definitely decently priced as we've been paying 7-9$ beers all month. Yeah, it's expensive, that's why we snuck in a lot of alcohol. 

Skip to the last call, we start drinking our last pitcher really fast, then these guys are playing some sort of beer pong, on a pool table, but like, you get a peanut in somebody's glass and they have to drink, it's a big free for all. Before that, we start throwing them peanuts kind of causing a peanut-food-fight until they tell us to come join them to finish up their pitchers too.

 

This is pretty much what it looks like.

After that, we start walking outside with them to where they invite us to come over and keep on partying. As we're a bit tipsy, the four of us just say Yes to continue the party and go over to their house. It ended up being one of the most fun we've had - the girl had a bass violin (I'm not even sure if that's what it's called, it was just a gigantic violin a size of a person), one of the guys had a guitar, tam tam's and randomnly this other european looking guy brought out an accordion - which he was AMAZING at! So they jammed for quite a while and it was really nice to hear. At one point, the accordion guy just started signing really loud! It was really godo though, I got it on tape. You'll definitely see it in the video.

So that's about it for that day! We're a bit anxious to find out about tomorrow's game..

Friday - February 26

I wrote this in Word and never got a chance to get it out for some reason. Yesterday = Friday.

So basically yesterday was pretty crazy and a scratch-off. First, I got to watch the semi-finals from a ridiculously good view, Section 111 to be precise, and so I didn’t take any breaks to eat or anything because no way I was missing that. I did get the end on video by a friend of mine, so that will be precious to keep! (My parents even spotted me on TV when I went all the way down the stairs to check something out)

People started chanting ‘We want USA’ very early before the game was over – which at one point I didn’t think it was going ot be a 3-2 game. After a while, I told the people waiting to go to their seats that I thought it was a tad too early to say that (about 10 minutes before the 3^rd period) and I think they got mad at me because Slovakia scored right after that. Oops.

I wish I could of taped the people walking out of the stadium. The usual – Oh Canada, We want USA, We want Gold (yeah no pressure boys)  and Go Canada Go and so on. But it’s just magical in there, when there’s a goal, it’s so crazy. I really hope we don’t lose – it would just put the whole nation on a year-long depression and the media would dissect every single thing that happened.

I met up afterwards with Scott, a guy who works for the New Jersey Devil which I couldn’t get over the fact he was a ‘jersey’ boy but actually made sense about hockey. Ha ha. Then we went to this bar with two of his friends who get to ‘work up’ the crowd – sweet job if you ask me – and basically just decided to party the night away, it was another of those random but great nights. 

 

  Big flag in bar

New Jersey hat - don't get fooled, its still Go Habs Go

Tonight I’m going downtown with Steph and we’re just going to go out and enjoy the last few days we have here in Vancouver. We jut own our 13^th gold – tieing the Soviets for their All-Time record and that means that tomorrow we’ll BEAT it – Right boys?

I also got a cowbell donated to me last night and it made me really happy for some reason. I love how they represent the hockey moms everywhere across Canada – You know you had somebody’s mom on your hockey team that had a cowbell, usually just one person, but we all know it! Hehe

Ottawa

I've just landed in Ottawa - It's been a great journey.

Update tomorrow on what I've done since Friday and until today. Whistler included!

For now, here is a video of Marianne St-Gelais watching her boyfriend Charles Hamelin win his gold. So cute, made me cry. But yet again, it's 2:33 am in Ottawa and I'm exhausted and about to go to bed.

Ahhh I'll miss these Olympics so much.

As if it's over!

We pretty much busted the internet limit where we are staying so I'll just have to be brief.

Full descriptions will be coming up very soon; basically friday and saturday nights were both drink-till-7am and the most random things has happened.

Didn't get a chance to catch the gold medal game, my plan failed! Gah!

Tomorrow I'm going to Whistler. We're actually taking a cab at 3 am to get to the bus terminals, to then take an hour long bus to the Train station, where we are taking the 5:15 am bus to Whistler to get us there at 7:45 am. We then will go check at our hotel see if we can check in, if not just leave our baggage there. We have a hottub and we'll be right in the centre of the village. Then I take a bus back around 10 am Tuesday morning to go back to Vancouver and straigh to the Airport.

I can't believe it's almost all over :( Although tomorrow will be epic.

I'm going to wear my Team Canada jersey on and I'm trying to find a flag to put somewhere on my snowpants. We're also going to snowboard with our volunteer coats, haha.

I can't wait to go! Wow! It's 11 pm so I'm leaving in 4 hours, so weird!

That's it for now! Lots of pics to come, and I took amazing videos!

OT: Women are dominating the podium for Canada

I just wanted to bring to your attention how the Canadian women are really rocking the podium right now. We have 6/8 golds from women, and they account 80% of the total medal count.

I think this is amazing, being involved as a girl in sports as I always did as a kid. I think our programs are really equal promoting sports to both genders. It does suck that it's a bit bittersweet to win gold for Hockey as we were the heavily favored to win at least a silver in this sport, but must feel really good for those ladies. For me in ringette, it was like the day Gloucester beat Ottawa in 2006 to go to Nationals, I'll always remember that time.

On that note, we have just beaten Canada's record for Gold Medals - putting our count at 8. Now, the country is in the running for the most gold medals at these Winter Games, which I think would take the pressure off the Own the Podium program people have been fussing about. I don't think without that program we would have half of these medals, and we only got unfortunate with the 18 4th and 5th place finishes.

We have tons of great chances of getting more golds, included women's curling, men's curling, men's hockey which I cannot wait to see the final outcome, hopefully in a box suite as I was explaining earlier (Yeah, I'm not going to work, sorry work ethics, you will take the side while I spoil myself with this olympic experience)

On that note, I want to point out how JDC and the Olympics are so similar (Tom Horvath would gladly explain that to anybody) and as newly appointed coordinator for next year's JDC, how I am STOKED to be able to be part of the Ottawa 2011 delegation for the JDC 2011, held in Ottawa. Also, our committee consists of 80% of females (what, you're surprised?) so I'm sure we'll do just as well as Canada's girls!

Day 13: Ok, Somebody ate their breakfast this morning!

And by that, I meant the whole hockey team. I'm not sure if it was Canada who decided to just start speeding everything up and play their real game, or if it's the Russia that had so many nerves that they seemed to not even know what hockey was in the first period....


So because I worked outside the day before, they named all of us and we were going to be put inside. I thought that'd be great, but I had to split ticket-taking duty at the door and being an usher in the 100's. Also, that section is the smoker's section. You get like the crazy-smokers absolutely wanting their smoke but you have to stamp them, etc, it gets a bit crazy. I got to watch most of the 2nd period, could of watched the third but the game was pretty much already done! So I decided to go eat. 


I'm not sure if it's because 75% of the people there are men ranging from 25 - 35 years old, drunk with their buddies ready to spend all their cash on beers, and the fact that there's only about 3% of volunteers there that are girls that are younger like me, but I've been getting hit on working at the GM Place on a daily basis. It's ridiculous! All the time! The guys always try to hug me, take pictures with me, flirt with me, say all these things, I always find it really funny in the end, as I said, pretty sure there's not many younger volunteers, it's all older anal women I would say, I'm clearly the coolest one. Yet, still do my job.


So it was pretty crazy in the rink at first! SO loud! Also, doing the tickets before the Canada Game also made me see some people that couldn't get in because well they basically got effed by the scalpers. Sucks to be them. The thing with the scanners. is that once you've scanned it, you can't re-enter with it. That's why we have to personally stamp them to make sure nobody gets through the cracks. There was a few people that came thinking that was their game, but they had the worng time :( But we ended up giving them tickets anyway because well it really sucks to reject those honest people.


I videotaped the crazyness from I get off the skytrain as I walk through my shift, but also took a few pictures. I also saw Miga and Squatchi, and went paparazzi crazy on them which I'm sure they weren't amused because we were in a accrediated people-only area. The people screaming and cheering the whole way up to the venu was so crazy! Can't wait to see more of it! 

I was burnt afterwards so just went back home. These standing days are getting long! Also, I met Jean Maisonneuve my old boss at BDO who has a Suite basically for every game. He told me for the Finals I can come and see him and stay in the Suite. You know what that means! I'll come in with my volunteer outfit because I'm supposed to work at 12 for the ceremonies (no way I'm going!) and then I'll just make my way onto the Suites, ask to go see a friend of mine, get chanced once in there at the bathrooms, and BAM! I'm in! So hopefully that will work! Wouldn't it be crazy to see this! Not working too, it's hard to contain emotions sometimes! 


That's it for now! Tonight I'm off so I'm planning on going out and seeing stuff! 


Here are some pics of people walking out - people were going nuts! And at that same time, we were catching the bobsleigh and announced to everybody about the gold and silver and people went nuts!

Also, these guys (well like, old men) invented a new sport. Don't remember what they call it, something with snowballs. So walking back home I got a picture with them! 

I decided to put on my best tourist impression

Day 12

I got to work outside today - it really wasn't pleasant with all the cold! Brrrr! Rain and wind are not a good combo, with the cold. It gets you straight to the bone! Such a weird cold, different than out East for sure.


Again, my days have been a bit more relax due to the nature of my shifts. (4pm -12 am)


I just wanted to say:


GO CANADA GO!

Four years ago, was a different team, different town. This is ours!


So Let's show Russia where we are, and it's Canada, and it's our gold medal! 




Hopefully I'll be inside, if so, check out my TwitPics for the live picture updates!
I'm also secretly hoping for the Swiss to pull an upset on USA! Come on!!
It is sad that one of the teams (Canada or Russia) will not even get a medal, especially after a seeding of 2 and 1 respectively. It's clear Finland, Sweden or the Czechs are not better teams than this, on paper.
My guesses for the semi-finals: Hopefully Canada vs Sweden and USA vs Czech. I have a feeling Czech will come on top for some reason.


After coming across this article, I realized that I was about 1 meter away from Tretiak, an Russian legend for his goaltending, on my second shift. Random, I know. 


That's it for now, my brother is out at the casino playing with some drunken fully-loaded scalpers taking all their money, so good for him!  I was just too cold to even move, I really had to come straight here.


I also wanted to direct you to this picture which I find really arrogant of the Russian figure skater. (It is the shot you get when you enter his website) Also after seeing he did this to young girls. 

Day 11

I can't even write a title for today because there wasn't much exciting today.


It's a bit weird to be here without pictures, or videos of my day, because I basically went to work from 2 - 9 and came back home afterwards.


I didn't usher today - I was at the media/olympic family accreditation check outside, so making sure the people could get in there with the right card. I would scan their cards, and they would either get a random check or go through.  I saw a lot of interesting titles, a lot of the board of administrators and the executive olympic committee, 2012 London observers (this is for you Liane!) as well as athletes, and the two biggest recognizable names would be Kevin Lowe and Donald Sutherland. It was refreshing to be outside as I didn't even want to be inside watching the women's hockey since I kind of have a hard time watching it.


As the Toronto Sun puts it, the women's hockey is:


''Team Canada will play Team USA for the gold medal in women’s hockey in the least competitive, least interesting, least Olympic of all sports in the Winter Games.''
''Fourteen wasted games of the supposed Olympic hockey tournament has produced nothing more than something all of us have known for years. There is no other sport like this in the Summer or Winter Games. Nor should there be."
''Truth is, you or I could play goal for Canada or the U.S. and get the team to the gold-medal game. And I know I’m not much of a goalie.''


Funny, as maybe you would think I would be somebody to encourage women's hockey as a ringette/hockey player myself, but I think it's only embarrassing. They might as well make a best 3 out of 5 tournament for USA vs Canada in the hockey division and Finland vs Canada in the ringette division to give something to the public, and not embarrass the Olympics. I mean, I could easily be playing for any of those foreign countries and probably do just as well. Gah, frustrating!


We are being silly at the curling rinks, and I absolutely love it! The fans are being crazy - hockey fans styles - something the sport has yet seen. Even the Québec boys I met the other night went to a curling game cheering for something they don't even know much about! It's funny because articles about this as I referred earlier, were talking about how this would happen. 


Tomorrow and Wednesday, I'll be working 4:30 - 12:00 so that will be quite a shift. It's better than my 9-5 because if I get to usher, I will be able to catch both of the last games, and only seat one group (the 9 pm) instead of seating 2 groups and only watching one game. 


I met another couple on the bus on the way back home, very nice people, hopefully they catch my blog by now! 


Okay, that is it for now. It might not be too exciting for a while because of my late-night shifts and I don't think I'll be going around town during the day. Thursday, I'm going to hit the Holland Heinken House for the day/women's finals/night with my friend Alex and his buddies from Ottawa.


Just today, I kind of missed Ottawa for some reason. Kinda!


Congrats to our golden couple, Moir and Virtue, to make figure skating look cool, even to guys! They are from Ontario, and been skating together since they were 7 years old! Wow!


The Men's hockey last night, Canada vs USA has broken records about the most watched sports program watched ever, with some 10 million watching it. That means every 3rd person in Canada were watching it!


Good night! 

Day 10: Cowboys Fringants

Well, yesterday was pretty slow. I woke up not feeling the best and realized the buses are not passing for a while because of the Sunday schedule so I would of been majorly late. I also realized that the chances of me sneaking in after my shift were getting slimmer by the day, and the attendance was much higher yesterday for the CAN vs USA game, meaning that scalpers were really able to sell off all of their tickets.

I met up with Marco, a friend from Louis-Riel along with his other friend Dominique and then 2 other people they knew from Victoria. Around 3 pm, we walked to the Granville Island to get comfortable in a bar but clearly we were still too late. 

We ended up catching the first period at Bar l'Adrénaline and then the 2nd and the 3rd on the big screen at the main stage.

After becoming depressed alongside the 33 million people in Canada, we decided to fix this by getting drunk! Yay! It's funny because the announcer said something like this: Comme canadiens français on est bon a célébrer des victoires, mais on est également bon à célébrer des défaites! 

Anyway, so off to the Granville Island Brewery we go:

We got the tasters, but ended up chugging most of them when we were strapped for time to go back and catch Cowboy Fringants. Here's a few other pictures:

Walking there was quite the funny part, since we were feeling the beers quite well. After that, les Cowboys had already started and we were basically front row the whole concert.

It was a pretty energetic concert, and I definitely forgot temporarily about the hockey loss.

After that, I saw the Québec guys I had met the night before, and we just chilled for a bit before going home pretty early because the band playing at Adrénaline was really... hm... special? I guess that's the word. So I went all the way back to Surrey, falling asleep a bit everyone on each train I was taking. 

Now let's talk hockey. 

If you want to know more about what will happen, You can check out the wikipedia site right here. Basically, tomorrow Canada will be playing Germany to qualify for the Quarters (I will be working at this time exactly) and then Wednesday all the quarter finals are playing (So I assume Canada should win against Germany and they will play Russia) 

If they win that game, which I'm sure right now, according to my Dad, they will definitely not even make it to the finals, they will play, most likely against Sweden or Slovakia in the semi-finals. Now, let's say they win that, it's a toss-up who they would play afterwards but it'll be a toss-up between USA, Finland or Czech. 

We can all see how this differs alot from what we had imagined, but hey! I'm sure Russia isn't thrilled that they'll have to face Canada in quarters. Basically, all the big contenders like Russia, Canada and Sweden will all have to be eliminated before the finals, whereas USA now is a favorite to get to finals because of the weaker contenders. 

Now onto the goalies: Yes Brodeur was very weak yesterday, and I'll safely assume Luongo will start against Germany to get him warmed up for the Russia game. I WILL be working during the Russia v Canada game, so I'll make sure to find myself a job that requires me watching it! Miller was really into it yesterday and was basically a wall, while Brodeur definitely let a few by him that usually wouldn't of happened. Now USA has this ridiculous confidence that we gave them, and they are talking about Miracle on Ice again from how many years ago, ugh!

Anyway! Today I have a shift from 2-9 pm and it's the women's semi-finals, I think I will voluntarily take a shift outside, as it almost frustrates me to watch the women play!

To finish, here are more fantastic High-def pictures HERE. 

Here is a cute commercial about moms:

Day 9: Gala Juste Pour Rire

Well! Here I am, I was supposed to work today but I wasn't feeling good / wanted to catch the game from a bar for once (and wear a team canada jersey and not the blue coat!) so I decided to call in ''sick''. Therefore, I won't be sneaking into the 100's for the Canada game, but I think I've had my fair share of excitingness for free already!

On to last night, I had it off, and we went to the Gala Juste Pour Rire and there were TONS of good comedians, it was really hilarious. They delivered exactly what I was hoping - Olympic jokes alongside with everything else in life. Louis José Houde really got me and my brother when he did an elaborate set about a tent-trailers and talking about going up camping with his family. We could SO relate, I can't wait to show the footage to you (Mom and Dad) because it will seriously crack you guys up!

I met up with Alex Gibson a friend of mine from B-D back in the day, and also met up with Audrée, my cousin's girlfriend as well as Marc from the other night. It was really fun to just be a bunch of people randomly together, and these are not even people that I hang out one a regular basis, you know? It's all in the Olympic magic!

The pictures are a bit blurry but that's the best I could do. I do have a lot of footage so I'll be able to compile a bit of that!

Afterwards, we headed, as per usual, to Club Adrénaline to party a bit more. We met some Québecers in line; they had been saving up for 4 years each putting money aside to finally come here and basically blow it all here! Haha! They were from Trois-Rivieres I think, and a bit older than me but around my brother's age. They were pretty cool, I ended up staying with them for a while. Also I met this couple from Newfoundland that I ended up dancing on stage with! It was quite a fun night, although Steph was pretty beat and sat down a lot of the night, garding my coat hehe! 

It was a DJ playing only francophone party songs, so it was pretty cool to hear that. From the good beats of today to the Ce soir on danse classics, it was a fun night. Over there it's always fun, and there's mostly older people, so it's easy to spot the younger ones and basically come together, you know! 

Also the guys had made this flag that they'll be bringing to the game tonight:

One of their moms were nice enough to cut the two flags and put them back together. So Let me know if you see this on TV!  They were supposed to contact me at the game because I was supposed to be there, but I'll assume they'll go back to Granville Island again because of les Cowboys Fringants performing!

This will be rather interesting as I 100% plan on showing up with the Team Canada jersey one of the guys gave me at the first Canada games and they are well, des séparatistes! We'll see what they will say about Canada tonight! In the Olympic spirit and all!...

La dernière fois que je les ais vu, j'étais en première année pendant Frosh Week a l'Université d'Ottawa mais je connaissait pas autant leurs chansons, maintenant je peux dire que je connais très bien la plupart des chansons donc j'ai hâte de me rendre en avant pour partyer avec les Québécois! 

C'est drôle à cause à la Place de la Francophonie je me sens tellement plus à l'aise, ''à la maison''. C'est vraiment plaisant!

And yes if you are wondering, I'm pretty much always having the time of my life, meeting a new group of people every night is pretty much the best thing ever for me.

It's a big hockey game so make sure to watch!