I found this blast from the past in my Google Drive just now. They’re my dating profile pictures from 2005, back before dating apps were at all useful and only crazy people (including me) were on them. As far as I know, the last one was never used due to the excessive cringe factor. As […]
Dr Michael Hewitt Benn died in Calgary, Canada on Wednesday, December 21st at the age of 80. He was one hell of a guy. One of the nicest people I’ve ever met and the best boss anyone could ever ask for. He would do anything for anyone and was the epitome of kindness and generosity. […]
I had a key party at my flat in Calgary.
The A-grade University of Calgary Intramural hockey finals of 2005. My friend Janay was competing.
Downtown Calgary is a very picturesque place. All the major buildings in the downtown area are connected by bridges, tunnels and walkways to allow people to move between buildings without getting chilly in the winter.
Some photos I took whilst visiting the West Edmonton mall in Edmonton, Canada. The West Edmonton mall is the former largest mall in the world.
I was planning to catch a bus around Edmonton but I met a local called John Arnieri on the way there from Jasper who kindly took me on a tour of the city. Random acts of kindness like this are very appreciated. Thank you very much John 🙂 The photo below is of the Alberta […]
Vancouver is a wonderful place I highly recommend visiting if you get the chance. The weather was awesome while I was there. Stanley Park is a huge park area right beside the city center which I skated around while there. I hope to go back to Vancouver some day, might even consider getting a job […]
I kept wondering what these crazily bright coloured but very common birds were in Vancouver. It turns out they’re just Seagulls! I felt a little silly when I found out 😛 This particular shot took about 500 attempts to get. Those darn birds move way to fast!
We had a completely insane bus driver on the trip from Vancouver to Kamloops, BC at 4am in the morning. As we were coming into Kamloops he came on the radio with a slow drunken sounding voice saying he’d got a bit lost and was having trouble seeing straight! But that we’d be in Kamloops […]
Lake Louise is a spectacular area in the Rocky Mountains. From above, the water is an unbelievable blue colour.
There was lots of wildlife around Lake Louise in the Rocky Mountains. Including chipmunks, birds and although I didn’t see the bear itself, there were even bear droppings on the track I was walking on. Scarily they were fresh droppings!
Princes Island Park is a small island which is separated from downtown Calgary by a small strip of water from the Bow river. There’s lots of wild life, greenery and picnic areas to enjoy.
I’m back playing inline hockey again! I’ve joined the Calgary Phantoms 🙂
Here’s some videos from the finals of the University of Calgary Intramural B-grade and A-grade non-contact hockey leagues. First up are the Stubble Jumpers (the winners). I often played at lunch time with a bunch of these guys and they were pretty pumped to win the B-grade. [MEDIA=27] The next video is of the A-grade. […]
Somehow I managed to end up on the University of Calgary physics hockey team! They were short on players so I signed up and dragged along Janay with me. We had the stunningly geeky name of “Team Group Velocity”. The team was a hotch potch of various levels. We competed in the University of Calgary […]
Bode and I at the University of Calgary.
I played in a social outdoor ice hockey tournament in Tuscany, Calgary with some guys I met at the Olympic Oval a while back. The event was great, ice wasn’t the best as a chinook (easterly wind) was blowing through, but it was a heap of fun and I hope to compete in an event […]
The Olympic Oval at the University of Calgary is the best ice rink I’ve ever seen! Two full international sized hockey rinks within the confines of a full long track speed skating rink! I played hockey there at lunch times a lot and I had power skating and hockey lessons there as well. Plus I […]
Here are some photos of my house in Calgary. The window to my room is on the left hand side of the house.
For Christmas, my friend Mike Boyle took me ice skating in the Rocky Mountains 🙂 The weather was great, well as great as minus 20 degrees can be, and there was HEAPS of ice. Unfortunately there was a tad too much snow to make skating viable. [MEDIA=23]
I went skiing at the Sunshine ski field in the Rocky Mountains twice while living in Calgary. It turns out I’m not very good at skiing 😛
A beautiful skating pond near my home in Calgary.
Well what do you do when you’re stuck in a strange foreign land on Christmas day? You have a Christmas orphans dinner that’s what! Gregor and I bought a turkey, got a bunch of other foreigners (Gregor’s from Oz) and then we deep fried the little bugger – the turkey, not the foreigners! The locals […]
My roommate (flatmate in Kiwi speak) and I went tobogganing. Of course those crazy Canadian kids decided it would be a good idea to build a nice ramp exactly where the natural flow of the hill goes so you end up going backwards at full speed over a ridiculously steep jump! We had a scary […]
Ice skating at the Olympic Plaza in Calgary, Canada.
Well what else do you do when it’s -15 degrees outside and you have an itch to play hockey? The idea of the rink came about one day when my roommate (flatmate) Gregor and I were sitting round talking about how his old roommate had built a rink in their backyard. So I was like […]
Anna Williams came to visit me in Calgary 🙂 Unfortunately she wont let me put any photos of her online 🙁 But here’s a photo of the beautiful sunset we experienced while walking back from the Calgary zoo.
Halloween party with chemists in Calgary.
Mike Boyle took me to see a Western Hockey League (WHL) game featuring the Calgary Hitmen at the Saddledome in Calgary. The game was very exciting, lots of big hits, lots of skill and a WAY higher level of hockey than I’d seen before. Unfortunately the NHL lockout was on at the time so I […]
I carved my very first halloween pumpkin 🙂 They sell specially grown pumpkins for the purpose over here. I was very stoked with my effort and proudly displayed on my front door step. After going to a halloween party with a bunch of fellow chemists, I realised that mine wasn’t quite in the same league […]
After a lot of trips with trolleys, moving some massive fridges and packing way too much glassware into too few draws and cupboards, we finally moved into our new lab in the basement of Science B at the University of Calgary. Here’s a photo of my boss Mike Benn. I stole the photo of the […]
30 degrees celcius, blazing sun and a ridiculously cold winter approaching … so what better reason than to have a pool party 🙂 We found a scungy inflatable pool in our shed, got someone to bring along a slip n slide and setup a web cam in our window to catch all the action. Unfortunately […]
It turned out Matt Dakins (an old mate of mine from our undergrad years studying chemistry at Otago) was living in Banff when I moved to Calgary. Thanks for letting me crash at your place Matt 🙂
I’ve visited Banff township in Banff National park in the rocky mountains a few times now. It’s only an hour and a bit away from Calgary. It’s similar to Queenstown but without the lake. There’s lots of hiking (tramping) and site seeing to be down there. The above photo is of Tunnel Mountain. It’s not […]