I’m back in Canada, having lived in Scotland for almost six years, my Girlfriend and I decided to go on an adventure, I started looking for jobs in different places, there was a job opening on Vancouver Island that I really liked. I applied and was offered a job to work as a Ruby developer on a content management system called Jigsy. I flew straight from Glasgow to Vancouver on Thomas cook. When I arrived at Vancouver Airport it reminded me of the museum of civilization in Ottawa, it had Totem poles and an artificial river running through it, it gives a good first impression to visitors coming to Canada.

I took a short taxi ride to the where the Sea Planes depart, and boarded my first seaplane. I was expecting a bumpy ride, it was smoother than any airplane ride I had ever been on. As we approached Nanaimo, I could see the houses on Departure Bay, as we were landing I could see my great uncle John who was taking pictures. He drove myself to their home, a cute one story home with a double garage and motor home under an awning.

The next day my we went to get my license exchanged for a British Columbia license, I was worried I might not get it, as I didn’t have two full years, however I had a reciprocal license exchange with the UK they had to include it, hmm.. maybe get a new motorbike next year. John and I spent some time looking at different car lots, we ended up driving out to Parksville, where I would soon be working. I was looking for Ford Ranger as it was a small truck, perfect for BC’s logging roads, so that I could go kayaking, surfing and climbing. When I mentioned to the car salesman that my parents had an Escape, he showed us a 2006 Ford Escape with very low mileage and the SUV was in mint condition.

The next morning we drove to Parksville, and I had a lot of fun haggling over the price of the vehicle, I’m sure they made a pretty good profit, and I was way under my original budget

On monday I drove to my first day of work, waking up at six o clock I had a nice drive to parksville and was able to get to work on time. On my first day I had a chance to meet a lot of the staff and associate a name to a face, everyone was very nice, I even met the owner Dave. At lunch the guys took me to the Rod and Gun where I had a delicious clam chowder soup, it was creamy with really fresh fish. After work was done I had my first journey back to Nanaimo, it went smoothly, not bad for a guy who just moved half way across the world. Hopefully I will keep this blog up to date a bit more, so much still to see and do.