Vancouver!

Well guess its again well overdue for a blog from me now.

In Sept I took the plunge and quit my middle management corporate job in London, packed my bags and moved to Vancouver. An unnerving feeling giving up your income and established lifestyle and throwing the cards in the air by jumping on a one way BA flight to British Columbia. Yes, I have family and friends here but still seven years is a long ass time to be living in one place, you could say I was fairly settled.

When you don’t have your job title and address alongside your name, all you have is yourself and the people around you. It is a fairly raw vulnerable feeling in all honestly – especially being single.

Vancouver has a notoriously tough job market as all the head corporate offices are based mainly in Toronto and Calgary and on top of that has the highest living expenses in Canada. It is located on the pacific coast surrounded by mountains and has the most temperate climate in the country so is attractive to many people as a place to live, booted by 33% of the Vancouver area is populated by people of Chinese origin. So lots of Hong Kong and Taiwan money here – in fact some properties are only marketed in Mandarin as that’s where the market is.

Happy to say after five weeks on ploughing the job boards, networking with business people and battling to get in front of recruiters – I landed a Sales Manager position with a small entrepreneurial tech company. No benefits, just cash and commission – a real difference to corporate London who do kind of take care you.

I live in a Condo in an area in the “downtown” area called Yaletown, a fairly popular area with young professional yuppy types – not that I define myself as a yuppy but most of my friends live here and you can walk everywhere. Quite nice actually instead of constantly jumping on crowded tubes and double decker buses.

Also re-connecting with University friends has been great – albeit most of them are married now, so slightly different setup to when I left being the only one with a girlfriend back in 2005. Its also nice to have the family so close especially being an Uncle now – good to be able to lean on them where I couldn’t before really living across the pond.

Living on this side of the world, I am beginning to understand the lifestyle it can offer and just having access to what is out here is great after being in London for my whole life post university.

Still have a strong connection with London and England – watching the rugby and football religiously. After seeing a movie yesterday which was filmed in North London it was weird seeing the place I called home but it seems so far away now.

Anyways, I will blog again on real differences I have seen by living out here especially as its clear some people here didn’t really know how to take me as someone fresh from London!