Tag: lunch

Vancouver, BC

Place 72 – Sep 25 to Sep 26 2021: Vancouver, BC – Walking Alpacas!

Kim & Curtis Hale

Saturday 25 September 2021

On Saturday, Curtis was up at a good time to go and get a haircut. He had a really great barber, actually! She was new at the shop but she was very nice and did a great job. Curtis’ll definately be going back to her for his next cut.

Right after that, Curtis walked back home and met Kim, before we walked for about 30 minutes to get to a park for a BBQ with Curtis’ hockey team which the team organised!

Not too many people turned up, but it was nice to have a bit of down time in the blistering sun, eat some food and have some drinks.

We headed back home and Kim went out to get a few items at some stores and Curtis watched the first Leafs pre season game!

Sunday 26 September 2021

On Sunday morning, we were up early and got ourselves some croissants for breakfast.

We left the apartment into the lovely rain and drove for about an hour up to Langley to a farm!

Kim had booked an alpaca walking experience for us both as Curtis’ favourite animal is the alpaca.

We got there and were handed an alpaca right away. We were able to walk them for a bit and then we got to a field where we met many more alpacas and got to feed them whilst we learned all about them.

We got to see the pigs, chickens & rabbits followed by some cows that came to say hello!

We headed back home after we were there for a while and once we got back we were pretty hungry, so we went out for an impromptu late lunch!

We went to Water St Cafe, which is down in Gastown.

We may have got far too much food, though on the plus side, we had dinner for the next night!

We got some mixed breads along with a cheese caprise, which was very delicious. The bread was really good too.

We finished that and for some reason, we order a meal each. Kim got a carbonara and Curtis got meatball pasta.

We had very little of our meals as it was a little too much for us! But we did have a few drinks which were delicious.

We walked back home in the rain and when we got home we did some relaxing for the remainder of the evening.

All in all, a fun, busy weekend!

Mr And Mrs Hale

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Vancouver, BC

Place 72 – Day 987: Vancouver, BC – Korean BBQ Lunch

Kim & Curtis Hale

We woke up and felt very well rested, which was great.

We had some breakfast which was just ‘stuff’ cobbled together. We had cookies leftover from dinner last night (which were free), some cake and some fruit, as well as juice and Curtis had a coffee.

We got ourselves ready and then we chatted with Kim’s parents for a bit.

After that, Kim went out to meet some people for work for lunch! The plan was to have an outdoor gathering, but that was cancelled due to rain, so she met them for food instead.

The food was just okay, but she had a really good time hanging out with them for quite a while! She also had some tiramisu pancakes which were good.

Once Kim got back home, we just did some laying down and relaxing for a while. We eventually got ourselves up and made some quick, easy dinner. We needed to use the mushrooms we bought, so we had those with some other things.

We watched some TV and relaxed for the rest of the evening.

This Time Last Year

Mr And Mrs Hale

Vancouver, BC

Place 72 – Day 977: Vancouver, BC – Team Laptop Setups

Kim & Curtis Hale

Curtis’ Day

Curtis had a meeting at 09:30. This was a company wide meeting which was very informative!

After that meeting, Curtis had a team meeting followed by a 1 on 1 with his boss.

Right after that, there was a meeting about a project. Curtis then got hungry so had some lunch.

There was another 2 team meetings and then he had an external meeting for another project.

The whole day was basically meetings, but he got a few contractor onboards completed and finished the day by creating a guide for something.

Kim’s Day

Kim had a low meeting day planned as she went into the office to train a colleague on laptop set up. Her colleague said she would pop by between 8-8:30 so Kim was up and ready to go, as a result she was able to get some admin done before being picked up. Curtis helped her load up the car with all the laptops that need to be set up.

Once Kim and her colleague arrived at the office they dropped off the laptops and then made an important trip out for coffee! When they got back to the office Kim walked her teammate through the laptop set up process.

The plan was to not have meetings or to have a meeting light day to be able to support on the training of laptop set ups. This did not happen, unfortunately! Her first meeting was with a consultancy firm and she had a quick chat after to discuss the meeting internally. Kim then joined a 2nd round interview with a candidate to have another chat with them and dive more into their experience and interests in the role.

Kim then had a quick break where she and her teammate went to pick up lunch. Before they ate Kim had a quick connect with someone to help them plan their meeting. She then sat down and ate her lunch with her teammate before checking the laptops and closing down the office so her colleague could get home before she it crazy traffic.

Once Kim was home she joined an interview review meeting to discuss a candidate and next steps for the role. To finish the day Kim had a meeting with a department about processes and next steps in a few hiring pipelines. She then had a really long call with her manager to exchange information of the day and catch each other up on things and make decisions and plans for the next few weeks and projects.

Evening

after Kim finished her meetings we had some dinner. Kim had leftover lunch so she had that and Curtis had some soup.

We watched some TV together and then headed to bed. Curtis is at the office for the morning tomorrow.

This Time Last Year

Mr And Mrs Hale

Vancouver, BC

Place 72 – Day 976: Vancouver, BC – A Patio Lunch

Kim & Curtis Hale

Curtis’s Day

Curtis woke up and got ready and did some work in the morning, after a nice scrambled egg breakfast made by Kim!

Curtis then had a Norwegian lesson and right after that he walked down to the office.

Someone that works with Curtis but out of a different office was in Vancouver, so he got to meet them in person and the other people from the Winnipeg office that were doing work in Curtis’ office are still in Vancouver, so they all went out for lunch!

Curtis was able to actually eat some food, slowly, too! He had a blackened chicken rice bowl which was actually quite nice.

This lunch overran quite a bit but it was a lot of fun. Nice to sit and chat and feel a little normal, though it was a little weird at first.

Curtis went back to the office briefly and then walked home.

Once Curtis got home, he caught up and completed a few things he needed to do and then was done for the day.

Kim’s Day

Kim had a great start to her day! She had a meeting with a potential new hire and then she had a 1-1 with one of her teammates. She also gave the update in the weekly meeting before hosting a post interview review to see how it went and the next steps!

Towards the end of the morning Kim had a connect with her manager about a few things that needed to be sorted out before giving an update in the weekly finance meeting. After that call Kim had a couple of minutes to make some lunch so had a chat with her manager while she made and ate lunch.

Both Kim and her manager then went into a weekly recruitment meeting to discuss a lot of roles that are in process. She then had a quick meeting to do some event planning and give everyone updates on the couple of catch ups that are being hosted next month.

To finish the day Kim had an interview, a quick review and then she joined a meeting with a department leader to get them set up for interviews and iron out the phone screen questions they would want to have being asked in that stage.

Evening

Kim got back home from pole and we watched a bit of TV and relaxed together. Kim is going to an office to work all day tomorrow and Curtis has meetings all day!

This Time Last Year

Mr And Mrs Hale

Vancouver, BC

Place 72 – Day 905: Vancouver, BC – Please Just Work!

Kim & Curtis Hale

Curtis’ Day

Curtis had to start his day trying to fix the things he did last week for his project (again!).

The setup at his company is a little odd, so there are a few extra steps that no one actually knew about that he missed out so it wasn’t working quite yet. Once he and his team figured this out, he was able to fix it and he hopes it works now, but it’s tough to test.

After he did that, he had his usual weekly team meeting and then he did a bunch of tickets before he had some lunch.

After lunch, Curtis was surprised with having to do an integration with 2 pieces of software, but it was super easy, just took a bit of time.

Once that was done, it was time for some more tickets and general admin.

Kim’s Day

Kim started her day with a little admin before having a team meeting. She then got a fair amount of paperwork done and managed to organise a survey to learn how to better support one of the teams.

She then had a quick catch up with one of her teammates before having lunch and then joining an interview. After that Kim had a check in with a couple of the executive team members before joining a second interview of the day.

To finish the day Kim joined a meeting discussing two new roles and then sat down with the team to discuss interviews that happened that day and review some of the pipeline of candidates.

Evening

We had planned to have a different dinner, but it takes too long and Kim had to work late, so we had some chicken with rice and vegetables in sweet chilli sauce.

We watched TV a bit and Kim had to do a little bit more work. We also and some admin to get done ourselves, so a nice busy start to the week for us.

This Time Last Year

Mr And Mrs Hale

Vancouver, BC

Place 72 – Day 895: Vancouver, BC – Double Curry

Kim & Curtis Hale

Curtis’ Day

Curtis had a brief chat with someone at 09:15 and after that he had some security data work to do as well as some tickets and admin.

At 12:00, Curtis had a team building session with his team in which each person had to pick another and write out answers to questions on their behalf, to see if they could get it right. This was pretty entertaining.

Curtis then played a game of werewolf which was also pretty fun and funny.

Once that was finished, Kim picked up some chicken katsu curry for lunch as Curtis got a $40 lunch budget from work for the team building.

We ended up getting enough food for lunch AND dinner, which we can’t complain about. That being said, the food wasn’t even that good.

Curtis’ after then consisted of another meeting with his team to wrap up projects for the last couple of weeks and then he did some end of week admin and some more ticket work.

Curtis just played games whilst Kim was out window shopping.

Kim’s Day

Kim had a lazy day! She slept in and then had some breakfast while she watched part of a movie. She answered a few work questions while she watched the movie too. Then she popped out to pick up some lunch.

After having lunch with Curtis Kim finished her movie and then packed up all the things going to the charity shop. After dropping things off at the shop Kim had an afternoon of window shopping and walking around downtown! It was lovely

Evening

As mentioned, we had curry leftover for dinner, so we ate that and watched some TV together. Kim did need to get some admin done once she got back from the shops, so she did that before dinner.

This Time Last Year

Mr And Mrs Hale

Vancouver, BC

Place 72 – Day 548: Vancouver, BC – Another Fun Games Night!

Kim & Curtis Hale

Curtis’ Day

Curtis had a team meeting at 09:30 and then after that he had some tickets to get done.

At 11:00, he had a little training session which was ran by someone who is on his team. This was informative and very helpful!

Once this was done, Curtis had a call with somebody to get an integration setup which took longer than expected, but then after that, Curtis had lunch with Kim, which she went and bought!

We had that and then Curtis had a meeting to surprise a boss at work as they got a promotion!

Once that was done, Curtis did some more tickets and some admin and then was done.

Whilst Kim was having her games night, Curtis played some games with some colleagues.

Kim’s Day

Kim started her day by completing paperwork ahead of a meeting, she also arranged a few other meetings for the day. She then joined her first call where she went through paperwork with her colleague. Then they went into another meeting to complete other paperwork.

After the calls Kim popped out to pick up a laptop for a new starter. She also picked up some lunch on the way home.

After lunch Kim had a call with her manager to discuss budgets for some things. Then Kim had a call with her teammate to show her part of a process for new starters. They also went over a document that they are working on together.

Kim then popped out to a shop to see if they had any of the mailing things that she needs. She couldn’t find any, but was able to get an idea of the size of the packaging that she needs so went back and ordered it online.

Kim then hosted another games night. It was a smaller group of people but it was still so fun! At the end of the games night Kim ended up having a strategy chat with a couple of people in regards to hiring. It was really interesting and so useful too!

Evening

We had pizza from dinner as it is easy and also delicious.

We went to buy that and then chilled out together for the rest of the evening.

We played some more games and more card games as well as watching TV.

This Time Last Year!

Mr & Mrs Hale

Vancouver, BC

Place 72 – Day 521: Vancouver, BC – First Apartment Viewings

Kim & Curtis Hale

We woke up at a really good time, got ourselves showered and had a bit of breakfast.

Right after that, we got right into doing the final clean and tidy, which took us a couple of hours.

We felt the apartment looked incredible once we were done, and the realtor felt the same, which was great!

Curtis welcomed the realtor and showed her to the storage and parking, and then we left and let her do her thing.

We went first to get a coffee/hot chocolate from a place down in Gastown.

The hot chocolate was part of the festival again and was a malt-style hot chocolate. It was nice, but not exactly what Kim was expecting. Curtis got an Americano from there too which was fantastic.

We left here and walked for a bit towards Curtis’ work.

We had a gift card from his work building for the food court next door, so we went there to get some lunch. Unfortunately, the card didn’t work, but we still got the food and went to find a place to eat it.

Whilst we were finding a place, we noticed that Jack Poole Plaza was slightly different with a lot of new random signs around etc.

It turns out, Ryan Reynolds is filming there and making it into another location!

We ate our lunch and then continued with our walk. It’s certainly got colder now and it’s rumoured that it will snow tonight, but we shall see!

We walked for a couple of hours what was really nice (but cold) and then we headed back home to meet the realtor and get our keys back.

We got back in and just relaxed for ages! We even had a nice nap.

For dinner, we had some frozen chili we had made before, so we made that into quesadillas!

We watched a comedy show whilst we ate that and watched a few other things for the evening.

Whilst all the walking was fun today, we do play to relax tomorrow!

This Time Last Year!

Mr & Mrs Hale

Vancouver, BC

Place 72 – Day 443: Vancouver, BC – No Work on Friday!

Kim & Curtis Hale

Curtis’ Day

Curtis’ day was busy!

Curtis spent most of the day doing project work, which went really well! He did this with some colleagues and got this pretty much all done.

Along with doing the project, Curtis had a couple of team meetings which went on for a while.

The day was very productive and he was very happy with how it went!

Kim’s Day

Kims new job is mainly a 4 day work week! She can use a Friday as an overspill if she needs to, but the goal is to be more efficient. So Kim had a lazy morning before spending a bit of time researching more PR stuff and a little more about a software for work.

As she had an open afternoon Kim organised to meet an old colleague and good friend for lunch. Kim picked up the lunches and they met near the office, but walked down to the seawall to sit in the sun and have a great catch up. It was so fun and wonderful to relax and spend some time together.

On the way home from lunch Kim grabbed some coffees and then watched a bit of TV to warm up from outside.

Kim had promised her friend that she would being some homemade cookies to lunch but she forgot. So Kim popped back out to drop off the cookies. On the way home Kim stopped at a couple of shops to look around.

Evening

We ordered some Indian food for dinner, we haven’t ordered from there for a while, so we were excited! It was a great curry as always, so that was excellent.

We played some games and watched some TV this evening. We have some plans this weekend so that should be good, providing nothing gets closed due to COVID-19!

This Time Last Year!

Mr & Mrs Hale

Vancouver, BC

Place 72 – Day 436: Vancouver, BC – A Virtual Team Lunch

Kim & Curtis Hale

Curtis’ Day

Curtis had a company-wide meeting at 09:00 this morning so he sat through that. Once that was done, he did a lot of tickets and also had another meeting at 10:30.

At 11:30, Curtis joined a Zoom call with his team and everyone got to expense some lunch to have whilst everyone is chatting!

We got some food from a Lebanese place nearby and it was terrific food! Kim had some as well but obviously only Curtis’ food will be expensed.

It was a really nice non work related conversation and it went by pretty fast.

Curtis had to do an offboard after this and then some other tickets and admin for the afternoon.

Kim’s Day

In the morning Kim didn’t do much, she enjoyed the final lazy morning before she goes back to full time work on Monday! She is so excited! Just before lunchtime Kim went out and picked up the food.

After lunch Kim watched a little TV and then played a video game for a bit, it was really fun!

Kim spent the rest of the afternoon reading a document that explains part of the immigration process. As Kim and Curtis don’t have degrees they are hoping to use a provincial nomination program that will give them a better chance at getting Permanent Residency.

This avenue would also allow them to apply for a bridging visa as a placeholder for PR, which would then give them time to finish the application without leaving Canada. So Kim took a lot of time this afternoon to thoroughly read the document and research things she didn’t understand.

Kim has also been messaging someone who did the same process last year with the same level of education, and they have been a great help. Its so nice to have someone to ask about how long things took and rheir next steps and any bumps in the road they may have encountered! Kim has been worried about the tight time frame between now and when the Visa ends, so hopefully this process will help.

Having done a little more reading and asking of questions, a lot of Kims concerns are now slightly less daunting, which is great!

Evening

We went for a little walk in the late evening just to stretch our legs and also to get some food.

We got a chicken pot pie each from Urban Fare as Kim has had them before and said they are good.

We ate those when we got home and watched some TV for the evening, including Truth Seekers, the new show from Nick Frost & Simon Pegg.

This Time Last Year!

Mr & Mrs Hale