Vancouver: for training, research, and tourism!

 

Hello and welcome to another blog, this one involves a road trip to Vancouver as I had a course to do and Kyran had accumulated some days off so he tagged along for the ride. 

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First up on one of our stop overs I encountered what you can see below. While I had heard about this I had never seen a drive-through bank until now.

So there you have it folks welcome to the future of banking for lazy ass people. 

The following photo would not be significant, except that Kyran might have got in trouble once for not taking a photo of the welcome sign as we drive in, so because he did it this time I suppose I should include it - there you go evidence that we made it to Vancouver.

Next photo is courtesy of Kyran who has become frustrated with iconic Australian animals being used abroad as some sort of marketing tactic.
They keep stealing our animals dammit!

Ok now into the good stuff..

The reason we ventured so far from home was for me to do an Electrofishing course. 

Electrofishing is essentially walking around in the water with an electric stick and hoping to catch fish. The electricity causes the fish to swim towards one of the probe nodes, and then someone with a net is tries to catch them before they get too fried or get away. 

If done properly the fish should just be stunned and should recover

Below is a photo of one of the fish that I caught, from memory this one was a rainbow trout.

 

 While we were in  the big city we thought that we would find a Vegan food place and a Vegan Pizza House was what we ended up at. 

It was a small establishment but the food was amazing. 
First up was the Spanakopita (Spinach Triangles), with a Greek salad,  rice, tzatziki sauce, and pita bread.

And then came the Pizza!

The half eaten slice to the right is the Meat lover part with all sorts of Vegan meat varieties.

It's hard work being a tourist!

 

Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden

This garden is the first Chinese or "scholars" garden built outside of China, and is located in Chinatown in Vancouver. Merc manged to finish the Electrofishing course earlier than expected, and we had plenty of time to do some tourism, so we chose to come here and see what all the fuss is about. Turns out National Geographic thinks it's the bee's knees!



The garden in general is supposed to be a "scholars" garden, and is actually quite small. The themes explored throughout the garden are very Yin-Yang oriented, and every single feature is very carefully planned and brimming with cultural history and mythology/ideologies from middle-ages China.  


There is another similar "classical" chinese garden to this (amongst the few outside of China) in Sydney called the "Garden of Friendship". 

The gardens are built using ONLY material from China, and from expert chinese craftsmen also imported from China to do the construction of the garden. The tools are all hand-made on-site using 1500-1600's techniques, and there are no bolts or nails used anywhere - only wooden pegs and cunning slotted wooden beams like a jigsaw puzzle. 

These end roof tiles have the shape of a bat (sort of) and each of the upper tiles on the roof have the name of the guy who made it engraved onto the tile. 

This is a pure silk artwork called "100 butterflies" and it has 100 butterflies embroidered in silk. The guide who was explaining this artwork said he only found 97 so i think it's a joke that there is 100...

The plaque above pertains to the tree shown to the left. 
Over 100 years old and still growing strong! Turns out the Chinese like Bonsai trees too, and do similar to the Japanese (although they have less strict rules)

 
The tiles are made along the lines of Yin Yang - these are female tiles, Yin, with curved shapes and dark colours. There are dualities shown even in this design, with Yang (male) elements shown as man-made tiles surrounding the major shapes, and white porcelain tiles in the smaller flower style features. If you drag your foot across the rock features, one way is smooth and another is rough - again, more Yin-Yang design.

The two images above show the yin-yang theme, they are both pavement types however the image to the left is the representation of male and the image to the right is the representation of female.

Left: what does that rock look like?
Answer:Abraham Lincoln

Right: The garden was built with curves and corners as apparently evil spirits have no knees and so they can not turn corners or go up and down stairs etc.

This was a window that joined the old classical part of the garden to the new part of the garden that was added on later by local Vancouver workers to extend the public space and compliment the yin-yang theme with classical vs modern gardens. 

Above: As mentioned before, there were no nails or screws used in the construction of the classical Chinese garden. You can see even the most intricate details were put together through the use of very precise joins. 
Below: you can see that even the frames were held in with individually crafted pegs

Above: This photo was taken in a little pagoda that had a round window on one side and a square one on the other. The round window that you can see us in front of represents heaven and the square window opposite us (where the camera is) represents earth. So if you stood in the middle of the room you would be standing between heaven and earth! This pagoda was also knows as the "ladies room" as it was Chinese fashion for women to have their feet broken and bound to become very small, and the women would often become sore and tired. There are long bench seats in this little hut, and this is where the women would hang out and chat while they rested. 

The railing that can be seen in the background borders along the garden walkway and is meant for the ladies so they can sit down on the ledge and lean on the railing to observe the garden peacefully and rest their feet.

The following few photos are of some of the window designs that were found throughout the gardens. Note that the rounder ones represent the feminine and the squarer one the masculine. 

The garden is home to many quite large Carp (Koi) fish, which are meant to bring luck and represent wealth to a garden like this. They live to very old ages too, and are quite expensive to buy.

All the rocks for the garden were recovered from the bottom of lakes by Chinese divers, and then shipped over to Vancouver without any modification except for ensuring they stay stuck to each other into the shapes and landscape shown at the garden.

The door knobs/knockers/rings shown above are in the shape of a Bat. These bring luck, because the word for Bat in Chinese (not sure which dialect) sounds very very similar to the word Luck. 


These are on the doors to the building shown on the right.

The log pillars shown in the images to the left and above are very expensive, very rare rood - each pillar is probably worth $20,000. There were 3 or 4 different types of wood used in the construction of that building, for the different colours and textures they provide.
















There were plenty of turtles and flowers in the gardens!

This is the lake which separates the old style classical gardens and the newer locally built section of the park.

Classic Chinatown artwork on the streetlight.

Right on the corner here, the thin black building is supposedly the world's smallest office building.It looks like a facade or front to a building, but really that's all it is. 

 Something you don't see every day! A Google Streetview Car!


We have been trying to find Mercedes work in the environmental science industry, and now that she's done the Electrofishing course and networked a bit with the instructors, there are certainly more positive outcomes in the future!

A few weeks after this Vancouver trip shown in this blog, Kyran has also finally gone along to the local Airsoft group's game and he looks forward to being involved in the local Airsoft communities and getting his own gear! Kyran is also having a great time at work, and enjoys what he's doing. 

Mercedes has just got a fancy new sewing machine, and has already begun putting it to good use making a very complicated looking patch-work quilt, to replace the very hot blanket we are currently using on our bed. It's summer here now, the evenings are getting hot!

That's all for this blog post, sorry for the delay and lack of regular updates. This post has been a few weeks in the making now! 

I hope all the friends and family back home in Australia, Spain, and England are doing well! 

Kyran & Mercedes