White's Life

Update time

2010-09-02T12:39:00.000-04:00

Yup, time for an update I feel.

Didn't realise I hadn't touched this since April, that's pretty poor on my part.

So the Summer has been good, both Kate and I have had enjoyable summers her in Toronto. I've been rowing regularly and coaching a lot. I'm now in charge of the Junior program at the Argo's rowing club, which will be fun this year as there is some promising talent amoung them and most have another couple years at junior too. It'll be interesting to see how much time I have to train myself when work starts again as it gets pretty tiring.

I went on a course to build a wooden kayak called a Night Heron, part of the Guillemot Kayaks fleet. It is made with marine ply and fiberglass the kit was pretty simple to build as it is precut boards that one pieces together like a jigsaw puzzle. There are some pics up here on my flickr of the build process. the boat is still undergoing finishing touches at home, but we've had it out on Lake Ontario already and it's great fun!

We also now own a car, a Subaru Legacy Outback 1998 model. very nice drive and i'm sure it will be even better in the winter, with it's heated seats, and 4 wheel drive.

We have 2 cats, something I've not blogged about, they're named Moshi & Mao, one loves to cuddle and be carried and the other detests being carried and just wants to lie on you the whole time.

Back on the water

2010-04-15T18:25:00.000-04:00

Went out rowing today, I'd say this was my first proper rowing session on the water as I covered 17km with an average heart rate of 155. Up until now i've only been out doing short rows to get used to being in a boat again, rebuilding blisters, getting some skill back. Anyway I took all my toys down today, gps and bullet camera, although, the camera wasn't working for some reason so i just ran the gps, so below is my work I loaded onto the Garmin Connect website.

Life continues

2010-04-13T16:07:00.000-04:00

So life here in Toronto is moving on at a steady pace somedays it's sloooow and somedays it's hectic, but i'll admit i've definitely had less of the latter.

Kate and I recently adopted 2 cats from the Humane society (they came as a bonded pair), at first impressions they didn't seem particularly bonded, as one (now named Moshi) was continually bullying the other (now name Mao). They've been here for around 10 days now and getting more settled and the bullying is subsiding as they acclimatise to their new home. Kate and I have both grown up with cats and other animals so it's nice having them around, one thing that is different here is that it is recommended that cats remain indoor pets. This apparently is due to the wild urban animals in Canada, such as raccoons and coyotes.

The cats we renamed to Moshi and Mao are 10 and 8 years old and have very different personalities. Here are a couple of pics of the boys.

Va'a / OC technique

2010-02-17T08:25:00.000-05:00

Lemmy V1 Technique in Slowmo from Ocean Sports Media on Vimeo.

Lemmy Lambert is the co-builder and designer of the Va'a Factory V1 and V6 in Tahiti. An accomplished paddler himself, Lemmy and his team, Taaroa Dubois, Roland Teahui, Steeve Teihotaata and Heialanin Vairaaroa won the Te Aito, Super Aito 2009 V1 races, they also manufactured the V6 for Top Tahitian Team OPT, who won the 3 day 2009 Hawaiki Nui Va'a race.

Lemmy was just recently in Australia as coach of a V1 Clinic organized by Erica Hamp, Tracy Horan, the South Queensland Zone AOCRA Committee and Mark Kennedy (Va'a Factory Franchisee in Aust ZuluSurf) I had the pleasure of spending time with Lemmy at the 2 day Clinic and filming him demonstrating basic V1 Technique. The video above is part of that Clinic.

Canoe building by one of the best

2010-02-17T08:23:00.000-05:00

In Canada

2010-02-02T14:59:00.000-05:00

Well we've made it! Eventually!

It's now February and we've been here for one month. we spent most of the that month trying to organise an apartment, who'd have thought it'd take 4 weeks?! in a country where we speak the same language. In HK I found an apartment and moved in, in under one week. The rigmarole went on and on one thing after another with this Canada move.

First up we were meant to arrive way back in September 2009 but Kate's company outsources the HR for their international moves, the HR company only sent us the paperwork we had to fill in on the 16th August, informing us at that time that once completed it would take six to eight weeks for Canada Immigration to process the paperwork. As with any paperwork it took us more than a day to fill it in correctly and once that was done it had to be sent to this HR company who then sent it to their Canadian lawyers who checked over the paperwork and sent it on to the Canadian Consulate in London, who duly kept the paperwork for 7 weeks, decided we were allowed to go Canada and sent it back to us. This whole process took us up to December 11th, 2009. The following week Kate and I took a one week trip to Toronto so she could complete some work and I could view some potential houses.

The house viewing went well and we saw a few that we liked and put in an offer to rent one in particular. We left Canada returning to the UK for Christmas pleased that we'd have an apartment to move into when we returned to Canada. A few days after Christmas we received an email informing us that the we had not been able to rent our desired apartment. I'm sure you can imagine we were somewhere between disappointed and irritated that we had lost this apartment. After throwing a lot of blame around it was later discovered that the leasing agent had forgotten about us and had given the apartment to someone else, it's amazing that this person is actually able to operate.

We returned to Toronto on the 30th December, 2009. We came out before the New Year because a friend/colleage of Kate's had invited us to a party and we thought it would be good to go make some new friends. The party was great despite the jet lag, which was pretty ruthless. Anyway Kate started work immediately and I start looking for work and looking for a house. Turns out that this isn't the best time of year to find a house, so choices were thin and are criteria was tight, we knew what we wanted and it was just a matter of time until we found it. After much looking we eventually came across the house we now reside in, looking quite poor on the outside, it turned out to be very nice on the inside and we decided to take it the day we saw it, so our agent started the paperwork. It turns out the landlord got a bit confused with the fact that Kate and I would be living here and her company would be staying, and the lawyers made something quite simple, hugely complicated. This process ran out for a couple of weeks, making myself and Kate quite stressed and immensely frustrated. Having a lot of second thoughts about whether it was an apartment worth all this hassle.

We are now in the apartment and after having more hassle from Leon's furniture store over the delivery of our furniture which we cancelled because of the hassle it was causing. We now have a lovely mattress and little else in the way of furniture. We do have all our belonging out of storage which is wonderful, especially as everything went into storage for shipping back at the end of August.

Here are a few pictures of the moving in process:

More Photos here

Still in HK

2009-09-30T01:28:00.000-04:00

Well it's been a while since my last post and I'm still in HK waiting for the Canada visa's to come through. Hopefully won't be long now as the paperwork is with the Canadian consulate. 2 weekends ago I took part in the HKIPC canoe paddle to Macau and back it's a 140+km round trip in 6 person outrigger canoes over 2 days. We had quite a big group so we took 3 canoes and had 15 people per team. The club has done this many times, it is usually an annual event although due to expense it's cancelled in '08. This event is a great way to introduce the newer paddlers to the club and also help everyone improve the sea change skills. Sea changes are used in long distance change races usually over 2hrs in length. Men race these distances with a team of 9 and women with a team of 10. The idea being, the canoe never stops. So every 20mins 3 people in the crew change, like a relay race. 3 people jump out the canoe and 3 people jump in. I took lots of pics from the trip and will post them up here soon, if you can't wait then go to my flickr. I also have some video from my camer I had mounted on the ama of one of the canoes. - Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Packing

2009-08-25T04:09:00.000-04:00

Well at the moment we don't know if i'll be given a 'Dependent' visa, and the packing people were delayed and that has given me a little more time to faff at home with my stuff. I have, pleasingly, managed to strip and pack my bicycles into their travel boxes, donated from my LBS, here's a pic of them packed, well nearly packed, i've just got to add some padding and seal them up.

Left to Right:
Look KG451 - On-One Geared Inbred - Felt TK2

White become O'Brien

2009-08-22T05:18:00.000-04:00

Emma and Liam got happily married on the 15^th August, 2009.

Here are some of the photos taken my my dad's various cameras:

Toronto Day trip!

2009-08-22T05:01:00.000-04:00

Yep pretty much as it says in the title. Kate and I went for a 2 day trip to Toronto back in June we left from Shanghai! it was a 'look-see' trip so Kate could meet the new boss and we could get a first impression of the city, and have a brisk snoop around.

We were there for 3 nights, 2 full days and had a good time. We both liked the city, a huge contrast to our current locations (Hong Kong and Shanghai), similar in size to London/Shanghai but with around 1/4 of the population, which means it's probably quieter than your local town. Our expected move date is September but here are a few pics to keep from my walking and being driven around.

The good news about this city is that we have a friend (Amelia) there already, yippee. And with some help from our HK paddling friends (Matt and Summie, who are from Toronto) we have some easy introductions when we arrive.

Pics:

Tokyo 2009

2009-08-05T00:45:00.002-04:00

Kate and I went to Tokyo the other weekend. It was a great trip, neither of us had been before and so many people had recommended it. A very interesting city not as many high rises as we'd both imagined and also very cycle and pedestrian friendly which is great, shame we didn't take our bikes :( maybe another time. There are some pics below which are all on my flickr account (all 380+).

Hotel room view at night:

Fish Market:

Lots of Tuna being carted around:

6am sushi breakfast:

Comedy translations on the menu:

Tourist stuff:

HK OC & SS Sprint Regatta

2009-07-28T09:36:00.000-04:00

Here are some photos from the inaugural Hong Kong Outrigger Canoe and Surf Ski Sprint Regatta.
More Flickr Photos Here

HK Internationals

2009-07-14T10:35:00.000-04:00

This is a very delayed posting of photos from the Hong Kong International Dragon Boat Regatta. Photos are from Saturday and Sunday, there are more on Flickr Here

Hong Kong Attack #2

2009-07-14T10:29:00.000-04:00

Hong Kong Attack #2 from b9t on Vimeo.

New Sunnies

2009-07-11T05:13:00.000-04:00

Bought some Oakley Radar's today, all my other sports sunnies seem to have disappeared, no matter they were all cheap as chips. These beauties, I'll be keeping an eye on!

Ben Stiller before Stage 4 of the Tour De France

2009-07-07T20:04:00.000-04:00

Ben+on+Lance%27s+TT+Bike+Before+Stage+4 -- powered by http://www.livestrong.com

NSR250 rebuilding ... more pics

2009-07-07T10:14:00.000-04:00

NSR rebuild progressing nicely, did the exhaust work and now the new can's fit fine, at-least until I can get the new pipes. I now need to do some nut and bolt shopping as there are a lot of randomly missing ones.

Post-it Stop motion

2009-07-06T09:42:00.000-04:00

I'm liking the Post-it stop motion:

Bike's back inside

2009-06-30T10:29:00.000-04:00

NSR rebuilding is way overdue! And it's begun eventually, by simply bringing inside out of the mosquito haven and inside where i'd be safer from the bugs! I've been putting the coolant pipes back on, filled it up with water and waiting to see if it holds ... it appears to be leaking a little. from the connections so i probably just need to tighten the jubilee clips.

Camera on Felt - Part II

2009-06-30T10:07:00.000-04:00

Here is my test ride with the camera on the downtube.

I started with it facing backwards, this I think is quite good, I believe I could get it to face up more and that would work better in a group ride. The second position isn't ideally where i'd like it purely because I fixed the cable in position fir the first position and there wasn't enough slack to reverse the camera where is was, therefore, having to raise it up the downtube, oh well lesson learnt.

Camera on the Felt

2009-06-29T09:17:00.000-04:00

Decided it's time to have a bit more ingenuity with where I can mount the camera on the bike to get some cool footage. Here is a little youtube of the tests at home and pictures to show where the camera was positioned.

The mock ups are just using bluetack.

Position 1; downtube, facing backwards:

Position 2; downtube facing forwards;

Position 3: under nose of seat:

Short video to see any potential problems:

OC1 camera again

2009-06-24T20:34:00.000-04:00

Put camera on rear iako of my Fuze OC1, here is the edited footage, most of it is in fast forward.

OC1 Bullet Camera

2009-06-07T11:04:00.000-04:00

Fitted my Bullet camera to the OC1 for the first time and half way through the paddle the bloody thing broke!! Anyway below is a 9 min clip of what the recording was like, unfortunately, the this section of the paddle had the sun in the camera's view hence a lot of flare in the picture. I was using Emily's Hurricane and paddle (very kind of you Emily) as my dad was visiting and I sent him out with my boat and paddle, luckily it all came back in one piece ;-)

End of Dragonboat season

2009-06-05T04:21:00.000-04:00

Last weekend (30/31st May) brought the end to the 2009 Hong Kong Dragonboat season at IPC. Our training boats have left the VRC until next year and the Canoes are coming back in the weekend.

It was an eventful season, being assistant coach and men's captain meant I took a different view of this season over the previous 2 years. A lot more pressure on my shoulders provided mainly by myself and my own high standards and also by the shoes of the previous Captains'. One of my targets this year was to lift the standard of our top crew (the Mixed crew) which would inevitably pull the Men's and Women's boats with it. This I feel was a success with us finishing an unbeaten local season, our only 2nd place was to the Macau National Team and this was by far our closest finish in club history (0.5 sec) at one stage we even managed to lead them (according to the observers).

The rise in the this boat was really credit to the increase in individual performances of the top club women, the men raised their game, but the women went up leagues over previous years. This also showed in the performance of the Women's team, taking a microscopic victory in Lamma over last seasons champions (Stormies) to having clear water between the boats at the HK Internationals. The Macau National Team even stated their "worry" about the "strength" of our crew as we chased them down to about half a length. This was a fantastic race to watch.

The Men's team has had something of a turbulent season - lots of disagreements between myself and Leon (Coach) didn't help - with us only winning our first hard race at the HK Internationals where we won the Open division (retaining our title from 2008) beating the Hong Kong team in the process. This crew was by far the physically strongest i've seen at the club and it was really a case of making it "click" which couldn't have happened at a better time, each of races at the Internationals went smoothly, everyone was happy (including me for the first time this season) with how the boat ran and what we had achieved.

The Mixed Crew was really a highlight and a show of strength and ability from those involved. This was a crew we hadn't really raced and definitely not trained in over the season, but with the crew that was involved, it was always going to be good. This year I ran the crew line up with a 'mixed' point (myself and Jo) something i felt would always work and it did (phew!!). I also ran a slightly front heavy so it would plane better when up and running and from looking at the pics, this worked well. As for getting a seat in the boat, wow, there was a lot of competition and some very disappointed people, hopefully that will drive them on to be better for next season. Next year at the Club Crew World Champs this crews has all the potential to medal. Here's to a successful future! :-D

Wuxi International Dragon Boat Regatta

2009-04-29T04:05:00.000-04:00

Last weekend (25/26th April) a few of us from HKIPC went up to Wuxi (2.5hr drive from Shanghai) to compete in a Dragon Boat race. We knew very little about the standard of the other teams, although on arrival at the venue we discovered we were tent neighbours with some rather large burly Russians. At that point we realised this may be a tough competition, and so it was.

it was a great weekend and we ended up coming 9th out of 12 teams. it was an Open competition and we were running a boat with 11 Women and only 9 Men - Even though our women were some of the strongest in the club (and they are strong), we just weren't able to catch the full Men's teams.

Lots of pictures were taken by John Chan (most of the photos from the race course) and myself here are some samples:

For more pictures go

here