Markus’ Blog

I sold my car today, a 1995 Chrysler Intrepid that I bought in May 2003, less than three months after coming to Canada. I am just coming back from the bank after depositing the money.

This was the second attempt of selling it. I advertised it for the first time last fall, didn’t get many responses and decided, due to changing circumstances (no longer being able to commute with my landlord, new workplace, etc.), to keep the car for now.

I still used it to drive to work on a daily basis till June. Due to a company offer to expense transit passes, I am now taking public transportation to work. Also, I am unwilling to pay the ever increasing gas prices (even though they have been going down lately) and don’t want to afford the fairly high monthly insurance rates (I am only at a 15% discount with ICBC right now, since I’ve only been here for three years). So I re-listed it about a month ago.

I got a phone call yesterday from a guy who lives in Kelowna, who seemed very interested in looking at it. I don’t know why, but I had a feeling right away that he was probably going to buy it. He did, for slightly under asking price, which was just fine with me. I most definitely was not willing to renew my insurance (due to expire on Nov. 2, 2006), so I would have sold to a dealership or used car dealer before that day anyways. They certainly wouldn’t have paid me very much, especially if I wasn’t going to buy a new car from them.

All in all, I think it worked out fairly well. The buyer seemed really pleased with the good condition and low mileage (122,900 km on a 11 year old car), I am pleased that I don’t have to pay $160/month (yep, that’s quite a chunk of money) in insurance anymore and I am happy to have gotten almost as much as I was originally asking.

Our experience with contractors hasn’t been exactly smooth. There have been quite a few hickups, stupid mistakes and plain carelessness as well as thoughtlessness. It can be so frustrating. One would think that, since they get paid to do a job, they might care (at least a little) whether their clients are satisfied with what they deliver. Well, it seems that 90% of the time that’s not the case. They could care less. And they love pointing the finger at others: “It’s not our fault, XYZ screwed up.” “ABC should have done that.”

The really “funny” thing is that it’s exactly the same way, half way across the world, in Austria. You have to deal with contractors, you better get prepared for some disappointment and the need to fight to get what you paid for in a somewhat timely manner.

It almost seems like there’s a whole worldwide contractor mafia out there, conspiring to piss off their clients and make their life as hard as humanly possible while getting paid for it.

At least we seem to be slowly getting to where we want to be, it’s just not an easy journey. In the next few days I might write up a little chronology of what was supposed to happen and what actually happened.

Yay! We’re moved! And quite obviously the most important thing is already up and running: Computers and Internet. Such geeks we are.

However, so much more needs to be unpacked, moved into storage, organized, gone through, etc., etc. There are about a meeeellion boxes in our living/dining room area right now. Much more fun for many more days.

I am currently taking the bus to and from work.

A couple of days ago, traffic on the freeway (Highway 1) into North Vancouver was really bad. So bad, in fact, that Hastings Street was completely backed up to at least Boundary Road. It took me a little while to realize why. There was another bus right in front of us, so I couldn’t see anything.

Once I figured out that it had to be the freeway entrance being backed up all the way, I assumed I’d be in for a long evening on the bus (at least another hour, till 7:00pm or so). This feeling was based on the fact that it had taken us almost 10 minutes to go roughly 200 meters, and we had over a kilometer left to go to get on the freeway.

Well, it came differently. Once we made it to Kootenay Loop, the transit supervisor at the scene suggested our driver take Renfrew Street and McGill entrance instead of trying to go the way everybody else was taking. We did. Was an interesting little detour that I quite enjoyed: The #28 bus going down Hastings Street, past the PNE, turning right onto Renfrew first and right again onto McGill and onto the freeway from there. You don’t get that every day. We went through all the bus stops in the process, of course, since the #28 doesn’t have any stops west of Trans Canada Highway.

The bottom line of the whole story: I got home a whole 15 minutes later than normal. Yep, just 15 minutes. Not over an hour as I had started to anticipate. Had we not done the little loop around the PNE, it may have very well been an hour later or pretty close to, at least.

So, thanks to Translink for saving my spare time. It is very much appreciated. I just wish I could have said the same about my (non-) friends in Austria, the National Austrian Railways or ÖBB. They used to do the opposite quite frequently, unnecessarily costing me time due to ignorance and not caring one little bit for their customers.

The last couple of days have been characterized by a certain activity called packing, and there’s yet more stuff to pack.

It started earlier last week, Wednesday-ish. Then we packed some more boxes Friday night. On Saturday I went to my office to get some additional boxes — fortunately we have lots of them lying around that I was allowed to take. Some more packing followed Saturday afternoon/evening.

On Sunday, we didn’t pack too much. However, this doesn’t mean we lazed out. We went to Walmart to get night stands, to Home Depot to figure out what to do with our towel rod (the ones they seem to have are all too long for our wall, finally we went with hooks) and dropped all the stuff we bought off at the new place.

Coming home, it was time to — you guessed it — PACK! Not after having yummy dinner first, though, and some pie in between boxes.

On top of everything else, we both weren’t feeling too great. Brigette’s kidneys, neck and head hurt pretty bad while I seem to have caught a cold and my nose and sinuses are all stuffed up. My throat’s not feeling right, either.

Quite a bit of packing got done, though, so I can’t complain. There’ll be more packing fun later tonight.

The beginning of part two of the kitchen install didn’t go over so well. Even though the Modus guys installed the cabinets on Monday, they are not the ones doing the counter top. That is handled by a different contractor, Fits Right, who seem to be a whole bunch of losers. Not only do they not listen to you, they don’t give a damn, are rude, inconsiderate and a big P.I.T.A. to work with.

Quite obviously, they are getting way too many contracts from IKEA, so they don’t care one little bit about the individual customer. Somebody doesn’t like their way of handling things? To bad for them. There are lots of other jobs to be done out there. That seems to be company philosophy.

Yesterday they said they would phone and schedule the counter top measuring, which takes all of 5 minutes and which has to be done before the actual install can take place. Installation usually happens 5 business days after measuring.

Next thing we know, one of their employees phones today and says, “I’m in the neighbourhood, can I stop by?” Well, no, you can’t. We don’t live there yet and your boss knows that. That’s what yesterday’s phone conversation was all about. To let you (your boss) know that you cannot just stop by, ’cause nobody’s gonna be there.

After that, a whole bunch of nasty and fruitless phone conversations took place. Fits Right was all of a sudden refusing, yes, REFUSING, to pre-book their measuring appointment. “We just do them between our regular jobs, that’s why we just stop by, ” they said. And they were really nasty and bitchy as well. Completely unwilling to co-operate, to work something out that’s acceptable to both parties. This is the way we work, you don’t like it, we won’t do the installation. That was their message. And they just hung up. Which contractor in his/her right mind just hangs up on their paying customer? — Exactly.

Finally, after complaining to IKEA, they agreed to phone half an hour before coming in for the measuring — which was exactly what we wanted them to do in the first place and which they had refused to do in the direct talks. Only after our IKEA contact spoke to them, they suddenly agreed.

Fits Right sucks the big one and so does IKEA for dealing with them.

Last Sunday, Brigette and I took the Whistler Mountaineer on a day-trip to Whistler. It was a lovely experience. The only down-side was that we only had about two hours to spend in Whistler before we had to return. That was not a big deal, though, since we mainly did the trip for the train ride and we knew that in advance.

Each way takes about three and a half hours and takes you on what must be one of the most beautiful railway tracks in the world. The scenery is awesome.

We got the special for BC residents that was offered to those who booked before end of May 2006: the train tickets were half price. They served us breakfast (croissant with ham and cheese, fruit salad, granola bar, coffee or tea) on the way there and lunch (ham and cheese sandwich and yummy cookie) on the way back. Both were really yummy. They also provide all kinds of non-alcoholic beverages on board. — Our suggestion: Why not offer some wine and beer, even for a charge, if need be.

Our hostess was nice an pleasant. She presented interesting information about the train tracks, the areas we were going through, as well as nature and wildlife.

The train was nicely renovated, inside and out. Even the washrooms looked neat and clean. Most definitely the cleanest washrooms I’ve ever seen on a train (and I’ve seen a few being from Europe where train travel is way more common).

For those who want to spend more time in Whistler, there’s the option of taking the train up and the bus back. The bus doesn’t leave till 4:00pm, while the train departs at 2:00pm already. Then, there’s of course the option of spending the night and going back by either train or bus the next day.

Conclusion: Definitely worth the experience and $95 per person. The regular price of $189 per person seems a little pricy, though.

We got our new IKEA kitchen installed today. It was a bit of a hassle, but the end-result looks great. Yay! So much better than the original kitchen.

The contractors who were doing the break down of the old cabinets and installed the new ones did an awesome job. They worked really hard. And IKEA was not helping. They had screwed up our order and delivered the wrong corner cabinet (39″ instead of 30″). Of course, the corner cabinet is the most important one. Without that up, nothing else can go up.

One of the contractors had to drive all the way out to Coquitlam to get the right cabinet, while all the others could do was sit around and wait — for an hour. According to guys, they are used to screw-ups. Happens to them pretty much every single time, they said, and one of them has to go and get something exchanged.

So they ended up staying late (till almost 8:00pm) to make up for the lost time, even though it wasn’t their fault. A big thank you goes out to the guys from Modus. Big thanks also to Brigette, who spent the whole day waiting for, advising and working with them.

We love our new kitchen.

I guess the time has finally come for me to join into the world of blogging. I have kept a “diary” kind web-site before, when I first moved from Austria to Canada. This site was in German, though, and focused mainly on differences between Austria and Canada as well as things that I discovered on my adventure.

It wasn’t so much about daily life, used software that wasn’t too well suited for the purpose and, being entirely in German, was limited in its audience to my friends and relatives in Austria. It will, admittedly, be a bit harder for them now, but most of them speak English, so they’ll still understand. And I am going to thank Marion already for translating for those who can’t.

This is supposed to become a “real” blog. I’ve been thinking about starting one for a while. We’ll see how well I’ll do.