An unexpected party

Rob visited!!

I feel like documenting it on the blog is appropriate seeing as this blog began when I was living in Australia, and you will likely see him mentioned a fair bit back in the earliest posts. 
What a great surprise though, I was out at Doc's with some folk celebrating Ben's brother's birthday when suddenly a strange "Unknown" calls my phone with the number +01234567.  Odd...

I answer it only to hear a fantastic Irish accent say "Jon Arkle!  It's Rob Lewis here".  Best surprise ever.  He continues to say that he has a chance to come to BC and would love to meet up with me, which he did a few days later.  Awesome.

The best part about having friends like Rob is that you can jump right back into where you were at despite a 5 year hiatus.  Even though it felt like ages since we'd last seen each other, hanging out was like we had seen each other last week.  Those are the friendships that count in my opinion.  Lots of talk of Lord of the Rings, Movie soundtrack quizzes, Philosophy, Ethics, Faith, Guinness, and old friends.   What a great week.

Unfortunately his trip back wasn't the best for him. He was trapped in the early morning on a broken down bus in a valley with no reception outside of Chilliwack.   As a result he missed his flight and thus began phone tag with the airline trying to move his reservation, and he slept on the airport floor ("slept like a baby" he said).

None the less, for my part at least it was worth having him here.

Also, my nerdiness knows no bounds... I don't own a Nintendo system, but that didn't stop me from pre-ordering the new Zelda game.   I just like owning it.  So now I've got to figure out a way to borrow someones Wii so I can play it.
It came with a soundtrack CD, full Symphony, awesome.


AND!  I bought a new Camera, which I'm still playing around with and having a great time.  I probably could find things more productive to do with my time, BUT here I am writing a blog, so maybe not.

As you can see, I'm pretty much a professional photographer now.  So, that's cool.

Karl Silckington

As promised, update!

Fighting off a cold at the moment...

(Segue to main point)
As many of you will likely already know, I have an (unhealthy) obsession with good ol' Ricky Gervais haha.  You name it, T.V, blog, stand-up, basically all of his scripted comedy work (which is genius), but even more so than all the others, I love eavesdropping on the banter between him and his friends, namely the old podcasts.  For the years that he was bringing them out, I was hooked on the podcasts that he would record with Karl Pilkington and Stephen Merchant which was essentially just three best friends hanging out and having the same sort of conversations many of us have with our friends (except of course Ricky and Steve are consistently hilarious, and Karl is a genius in his own... special way).  I would listen to them often while driving to University, (made the mistake of listening to them on the bus once... strange looks for the laughing man), but the real treat was when a podcast would come out on the Friday before my weekend Graveyard shift, 8 hours of lonely night-work goes by a lot faster when you feel like you're with friends.

Now, there was one podcast where Karl said something that, as usual, had a foundation of wisdom behind it, namely that "it's good to be sick, so that you know when your healthy" (I paraphrase).   Of course, that was funnier at the time with the addition of his friend's berating him for saying it afterwards, but almost annoyingly now every time I get sick I find myself thinking back to that statement.

So, in honour of good ol' Pilki, I am... er... happy that I'm feeling gross because it'll mean I'll appreciate it when soon I will feel better.  I guess that's really true about everything, that classes "you don't know what you've got till it's gone" mentality, applies to everything, even the sniffles.

And then of course are the REAL ailments.  I have friends who are battling cancer, family with chronic illnesses, friends with disabilities or injuries that render them incapable of doing the things that I love.

When put in perspective, I'm happy that I can say the worst of my worries is a sore throat and snot.

So... although this post isn't particularly interesting, it stirs the waters, and keeps the blog alive until it gets properly used in the new year with my travel plans.   But it is nice to think about what I should be, and hopefully always will remain thankful for... my health, my abilities to do things such as triathlons, or travel.  Not everyone in the world has been dealt the same benefits that I have been... and it would be selfish and cruel of me not to recognize that I am incredibly fortunate.

It's nice to be inspired to remember that.  Important too.
So for that reason, I guess Karl was right.   Today it's been a good thing for me to feel sick.