This is my last transmission before I go dark.

So tomorrow afternoon, I’m moving out of the apartment where I’ve been staying for nearly 3 months.  It certainly doesn’t feel that way.  Unfortunately I’ll be losing my Internet powers temporarily while I try and get hi-speed set up there (he only has dialup).

And I thought it couldn’t get worse than last week.  But no……It really just doesn’t end.

First things first, few updates:
- Settled on a new place in the very far SE corner of Vancouver, in a townhouse with a Jewish guy in his 30s/40s….seems to have put a lot of faith in me already, pretty much cut off any other offers/viewings from anyone else until I got back to him with an answer…..and he made it sound like he would never get around to contacting my references, citing his “good intuition about me”.  Also he had to fix up something w/ his house insurance, and freely admitted that if i were to steal anything from now and run away, there would be nothing his insurance could do about it.  While it still unnerves me to this moment that I’d be soon living w/ pretty much a complete stranger where our only connection was through craigslist, the fact that he can vest this much trust in me already is assuring.  But…for $350/mth, I get access to a fully furnished 2-story townhouse, furnished and spacious room (no more “den”!), large kitchen, washer/dryer, UNDERGROUND PARKING (til the day he ever gets a car), bike storage.  All this in a nice quiet neighborhood, no more emergency vehicles swinging past my house every 5 min at night, no more getting run over by cars on the street, and no more of what I’m about to describe in a bit.  I will lose in being in a more remote location but not by much cuz I got a car, and while I do have a bus stop right outside, it still doesn’t beat the convenience of going from Victoria Dr to Commercial Stn.

- I never really got to formally mention what exactly my work with Shinno-sensei and Ono-sensei was.  This year is the first time that SFU is hosting the JLPT in Vancouver (taking over UBC or wherever they previously had it)…and since Ono-sensei has been pretty sick for the past while, they are now left severely shorthanded with handling the paperwork and creating / entering the applicants’ info.  The day my car got jacked was when Ono-sensei called me up to discuss the position and when I gave my acceptance.  Now we’re just about rolling into the final week of application acceptance, before the cutoff date on Friday.  Then I imagine everything will be quite calm though I suppose they will always find some work to give me.  However (thankfully for my deflated wallet) I will be working at least one extra day this upcoming week to attempt to catch up with the tsunami of applications we’ve been getting now due to the approaching deadline….last year they had maybe 4-500 applicants (I think I can say that without breaking my confidentiality agreement, since that was last yr)…so we’re expecting a helluva lot more to come in this last week…..I work Mondays and Thursdays, with a few exceptions, for 4hr each for a total of 8hr @ $15.  Hardly enough to pay rent, much less other necessary expenditures I need to survive.  Time to find a PT (or even FT) job…FAST!  My parents have cut me off so the only options I would have would be to get my sisters to bail me out, or start cutting into massive credit card debt.  (They raised my limit last month from $3100 to $8100….don’t ask how or why.)

- And now….the latest chapter in my legacy of Vancouver karma….I run outside to grab some late lunch after a crazy phone-call-packed morning involving:

ICBC, who called to say the guy who ran me over filed a claim to cover any medical expenses I may require as a result of the accident.  Maybe just for the sake of pushing paperwork…maybe I could ask them to cover me for some Tylenol or something? 10 days or so later and I’m *still* sore in a few places.

Jim (my new roommate to be) called me up after failing to the night before as he originally promised, to set up a time for the move.  Sat @ 4ish? Sounds good to me too.

Google called me up, after getting an email from them earlier in the week saying that they wanted to interview me!!  He was going to do it on Wednesday (in the midst of my mad housing search) but found out last second that his phone didn’t allow “international” calls.  Couldn’t even call friggin’ Canada? wth.  Anyways, he proceeded to ask me to rate my skills in a various gamut of programming languages etc, and a few simple questions about the stuff I deemed to have relative competence in.  This continues next week with an online interview, where I need some high-speed internet to answer interview questions in real-time by typing out the answers to some programming / scripting questions.

My friend from Edmonton called me but unfortunately I missed the call cuz I was in the shower, she did leave a message and said she’d try again, but it’s looking like it might be impossible to meet up after all, given their erratic schedule and especially considering my move and all.

After all that, I got lazy for several hours, procrastinating on my packing.  But when I finally decide to leave the house….I discover…..this… O_O:

What…..da…….hell……….

Fortunately, it was NOT a hit-and-run, since after the initial shock, I noticed a slip of paper with a business card slipped under my windshield wiper.  The business card was from a Richmond-based moving truck company….. o_o
After calling and waiting on the line several times, I got a hold of “John” who apparantly was the head honcho of this company.  He explained that he was fully aware that one of his drivers had done this…at 9:30am (after confirmation from the perpetrator himself), and that I’d get reimbursed for it, and to let him know what the estimate would be……ok.  But what am I gonna do with the car in the meantime?  I have to friggin’ move this weekend!!  John suggested to take off the fender for now (it was still hanging on by one notch on the passenger side)….and well….I had to clean up the random pieces on the ground as well….this puts a HUGE damper on my moving abilities since I have to put this huge fender in my car (even pulling down the back seat to accomodate extra space)…..

I was lucky to find a auto-body shop just off SW Marine right before they were closing during my food run (actually I was trying to find Vancouver Honda while dodging rush-hour traffic, I failed)…enough for them to get my info and take pictures so they could have a quote ready for me first thing Monday morning, when they’ll notify both me and John of the charges, and we can proceed from there.

WEEEEEE I LOVE DORAMA!