Our Saturday was quite different than anything else we would have expected to be doing on a Saturday, let alone our first Saturday in Vancouver. We got free press passes to Fan Expo Vancouver 2012 (Edition 1). The Fan Expo could be thought of as the Canadian edition of the Comic Con. That means a lot of stands with all things Comic/Anime/TV/Movie related, from T-shirts, cushions, actual comics to actual cast members from TV-shows and the first Batmobile (There was a guy who would take a picture of you and the car for 20 dollars.)

So here we were, on this Expo, knowing that in mere hours we’d be acting like a group of political radicals that walked straight out of a TV show.

Our first part of the day we spent looking around bewildered at the amount of people, and also the costumes people had made. Some silly, some sexy and some really awesomely great. By far, the best costume we saw that day was Master Chief (of Halo fame). The guy who made it had spent 1000 hours making the suit. And it sure looked the part.

Then came the time we’d been waiting for. We had to wait a while in the panel area, we spread out across the empty seats to be mingled with the general public. Slowly but surely the seats filled up. Luckily a few colleagues were there aswell, so I had some people to talk to. I, and my nerves, liked that a lot. So after a very short intro came the cue for one of the other actors that was playing member of this political group to rise up and go against the lies that were being told about this organization. So when she walked out it was our time to rise up and liberate.

Photo by Jeff

The actual motive for this whole setup was to hand out flyers to people, convincing them to play ARG that will be accompanying the launch of the TV show. This did ment we had to try and convince people we were from this organization. At a Fan Expo like this, that was completely the wrong way to go about it. Visitors at a Fan Expo are not there to hear about political ramblings. They are there to hear about nerdy stuff: TV shows, Anime, Movies, Games, etc. So after a few futile attempts we went on with just being us, selling people a gaming experience. That worked really well. The visitors want to play things, want to be submerged. Especially the cosplayers – the people in costumes.

In that category I was really amazed. There was a group of people that had Game of Thrones costumes: Daenerys Stormborn, John Snow and Jamie Lannister. These characters were so well done that they had to go separate to move around, otherwise they could not even walk a meter. Of course there are the standard Links, Pokemon, Dragonball Z and the mandatory Stormtroopers plus all that kind of things. Also not to be excluded: the sexified female Links (although Link in the games is male there are a lot of female Links at a convention like this). Also, there was this guy running around in a deer pelt and deer head. (I think its from Street fighter or something). A lot of things I did not recognise; I am not even close to nerd enough to know all these characters. Luckily I had Isaak as my walking character guide. Not to be forgotten is the Female Shepard (Mass Effect) with a quite impressive costume. There were actually two Female Shepards. One actually looked more like Shepard – renegade scars included – and the other sported a better looking costume. Both were interesting in their own right. Later I learned that Jennifer Hale, the voice actor that did Female Shepard, was actually at the Fan Expo. That is someone I would have liked to talk to as I am kinda curious what she normally sounds like and if her voice even resembles Shepard’s voice or that it’s completely different.

After that we had seen enough people, cosplayers and flyers we went our seperate ways. Isaak went on some pony quest to see a screening of “My Little Pony, Friendship Is Magic” This scene has an idiotically big cult following, which is quite impressive. There were a lot of cosplayers in Pony costumes. Though they are a little harder to recognise since, well, converting a four-legged animal to a human does not go over all that well. At Least, my eyes aren’t trained to recognise them. Sinne and I decided to explore the city some more.

As we walked out of the Convention Center, we saw a Swat van and a lot of people surrounding it. Normally I am not really the disaster tourist. Though there was something fishy going on and something caught our eyes. Walking there I could imagine how Vancouver could pass off as a city like New York. Just like New York, Vancouver is completely filled with big glass skyscrapers and Art Deco buildings. Beside the Swat van were a few bored looking office workers staring at a tall building, and Sinne inquired what was going on. Lo and behold, it turned out to be a film set. But nobody was as surprised about this as we were. They all acted like it was normal. “Happens a lot here. You’d be surprised at how much was taped here.” That’s the general remark on that subject.

We walked on, as the filmset seemed rather quiet. Suddenly I realised that the Yellow Cabs being parked outside of the building were not Priuses (Most cabs in Vancouver are a Toyota Prius). They were New York Yellow Cabs. And, as it turned out, the film set was indeed meant for some location in New York. Around this time we ran into a few people from the crew of the film set. There the whole situation got even better. It wasn’t just any film set. It was Uwe Bolls film set. (He’s done flicks like Bloodrayne, Alone in the Dark, Far Cry, etc.) We got the most amazing imitation of the German director of one of the crew members. It would seem he is actually insanely comedic to work with. The crew liked him, since every first take was fine with him. Less work for them.

After getting some Must-See-While-In-Vancouver tips from the crew we moved on. We ended up on a building’s roof with a garden and an epic amount of stairs. This was when we realised what made this city so amazing: It has space. You have a chance to do these strange architectural structures. Though fun, a building like this doesn’t have much of a function. In The Netherlands there isn’t any room for these kind of idiotic things. Especially not in the middle of a city center. Underneath the structure was an ice court. Well, it is in the winter. Now, it was ust a slap of concrete where people were practicing Capoeira and Breakdancing.

Our tour let us back to Trees, a coffee place we visited the first day, since we were told that they have the best cheesecake in Vancouver. And they sure have. I can say that. What an awesome cheesecake that was. Not that I have had a lot of cheesecake experiences, but this one was really good. Also, the people working there really like their work. I guess that always helps with these kinds of shops. Interesting note: on this very saturday three people actually guessed we are from the Netherlands. You’d think that Dutch isn’t quite as recognizable as German or French accents. Most people are totally clueless as to our origin, but these people guessed it right the first time.

The next day we split up to have some time of our own. Well, Isaak went to the Fan Expo again (we had free passes so why not). Sinne and I went looking for shoes for Sinne and some other things. One of the most idiotic things we found out was that we some places have four coffee (just regular coffee shops not the ones we have) packed together in a corner. That’s insane. And after that went I went on to the Fan Expo as well and Sinne went looking for a public library, though that ended up in Stanley park (which is about 1.5 hours away.). I found Isaak just walking out of the Convention Center, so I talked him into giving me his camera and I went in to see if I’d be capable of taking some nice pictures. It turned out not to go that well because of the insane amount of people and the bad lighting conditions. Most of the night we just spent in the hostel enjoying our first month first three days.

FanExpo Show floor. Photo’s by Isaak, Jeff and me who stole Isaaks camera.

Us playing Liber8 Terrorists. Write up here.  Photo’s by Jeff

That should account for our whereabouts for the first week. The next week will be detailed – though a little less adventurous - later.

Well, those next few day’s are more like weeks, so here is a new day. Its only one day. A lot more to come, when we get the time that is. (lets hope it is before we come back)

Day4
Here is where things got interesting. The first thing we had to do for the day (a very sunny day) was destroying props from Continuum for the upcoming ARG. Doing this involved being outside, which is always good on a sunny day. We were finally getting rid of our Jetlag at this point. So we took the opportunity to walk in a different direction, to the south east.

Here we found a Chinese Garden on the edge of chinatown, the same place we visted a few days before, thats not too odd i’d guess. We did though spend a little too much time there, people at the studio wondered where we had been all this time when we came back.

So this was just about our Friday at work and we didn’t go away early… again as we got into a conversation with Matt (President at Z2H) that was way too interesting. He explained the whole idea behind Animism, their own transmedia IP and how different parts of it are catered to different audiences. Also we learned why he wanted us here to come work for him. He was looking for people that understood the idea behind ARGs and could develop them. People that have the same train of thought. And he, with only seeing our site, was convinced that we were the kind of people he was looking for. Fortunately for us, the same was true. That was quite the eye opener.
The rest of the day we spend looking around town. Being impressed by the majesticness of the city. At the end of the day Isaak met up with a Canadian friend who was in Vancouver for the Fan Expo. Sinne and I walked around some more. We ended up at a bay with this as a view.

After that we found another grocery store, one we might not want to have found. Well, it’s a nice store, though some parts are better to just skip, like, well, you would walk around a giant crab that’s snapping at things on a beach. Unfortunately for the crab it was in a small fish tank, next to a bunch of lobsters and other sea animals that seemed to be in a state of limbo. It was kind of sad.

I will try to upload some more stories later. Lets hoop later is this time a bit sooner.

Another week passed by like a breeze. It seems the world here is such a rush I never get to write about what we actually do. By now we’ve been living in our own apartment for a week, time really flies here. I’m going to give a brief overview of how our first week was like. My memory though might be a bit blurry at times, but that shouldn’t hurt the story.

Meeting Z2H

View from the Cambie Bakery

On the second day in Vancouver we had breakfast in the Cambie Bakery and first went looking around for some things. What exactly I can not for the life of me recall. I think it was a padlock for the locker in our room at the Cambie. After that we went to find lunch and went to Z2H for our first day there. We got a place to sit and some things to read about some of the projects we’ll be working on: an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) for Continuum, a sci fi series set the premier at the end of this month, and an ARG for Animism, Zeros 2 Heroes’ own transmedia property.

After a short while we got notified that we’d be working on Saturday at the Vancouver Fan Expo, which is basically Canada’s Comic Con. It turned out to that we’d be the rabbit hole for the Continuum ARG there. We were to play members of a radical political group called Liber8 and crash the Fan Expo. So that day was filled with reading scripts and the series’ bible; getting up to speed for the project we’d be working on. On that same day the Canucks, Vancouver’s ice hockey team, played what many thought to be their last match of the season. A bit of context: ice hockey is basically Canada’s football. Not too long ago riots broke out in Vancouver over a lost hockey game. Maybe Canada and the Netherlands are more alike than we thought…

That evening, wanting to eat at an actual restaurant, we dined at a local, unaffiliated Mexican place. These seem to be rare here. The food though was very tasty. And we could enjoy/witness the Vancouver Canucks Ice hockey game. After that we wandered into the lesser parts of town: Chinatown to be precise. Not that we get scared of a drug dealer or a homeless person though, those aren’t that surprising to us. Other than that it was a wonderful walk: the streets just breathe China, even the streetlights.

Telephones?

The next day consisted of more reading, a lot more reading, so that we could prepare ourselves. We thought we’d also ask people at the studio if there are any neighborhoods that are dangerous to wander in to, to which Nik, the studio manager, replied: “you’re three healthy young guys, and not small guys either, I don’t think anyone will want to rob you. There are way easier targets out there.”. They also told us we could take it easy on being in the office that week, since they figured we’d need some time to adjust to the change of time. So we did, well, not really. It seems to be our biggest downfall that we like talking to people, so we mostly spent time chatting with our co-workers instead of going away early and catching some rest.

West Hastings Street, Location of Z2H office

After being done with that we went to find a place to get sim cards so that we could use our phones. We figured that would be a clever thing to do. Though little did we know how bad it is arranged in Canada for mobile traffic. For us, getting a prepaid card is as easy as walking into a store and buying one from the network you like. Here… not so much. First thing we learned is that some telephone providers have complete sleazeballs working for them. They’re a bit too pushy, and in that sense feel fishy. The second thing we learned, prepaid is called Pay as You Go, and the money you add to the account only stays valid for a month. After that you need to put money on your account again. Even more backwards is that you pay for incoming calls. So all providers get paid twice per call. Nice for them, but not for us though. After a long walk past every telecom provider in town – there are no stores like Belcompany that have everything – we made a decision, only to find out that the stores with very big network logos are not the real stores, they are resellers and charge 35 dollars extra. The real stores are these little kiosks in the mall. I still do not understand this, it’s really, really strange.

After that we walked into a grocery store in Canada for the first time. They are, at least in downtown Vancouver, not that different than what we are used to, although it is much more common to have two floors in a grocery store, which has more to do with how the buildings are set up. Another thing that is quite different is the way the vegetables are presented. Every store has a irrigation system that keeps the vegetables wet. I guess it is to keep them fresh. I have no clue if it has actually any use or that they do this just for show. It looks very nice though, and gives the impression that the stores care about their products. This meant we tried our first self cooked dinner at the hostel, which went paired with a lot of cussing at the electric stove and dull knives. Well, mostly that was me, Isaak and Sinne are less used to luxury kitchen than I am I guess (Isaak: but you’ve already begun educating us).. On the other hand, vegetables are really good and tasty here. They have a lot more flavor than the ones you can find in the Netherlands, even compared to organic.

The rest of our week can be read here in the next few day’s, if our work schedule permits it that is.

A new blogpost. Long overdue, we know, but it’s from Vancouver this time. We have been here for almost two weeks now, so it’s a good time to share what’s going on here. The coming blog posts are going to be a bit different from our previous ones since they are not going to go in-depth on our projects. They are meant to give you an impression of how we live in Canada.

Best to start at the beginning. We, Isaak, Sinne and Kuno, were invited to do our internship at Zeros 2 Heroes Media Inc. (Z2H from here on out). Minor detail: they are located in Vancouver, Canada. That’s for us pretty much the other side of the world. Of course, that did not stop us, nor Z2H for that matter. They wanted to make this work. So thanks to them and with support from our school we are now in here.

On 16th of April 13:00 we stepped into a plane at Schiphol airport. Since we had a direct flight, we guessed that we’d be flying mostly over the ocean during our 9 hour flight. It couldnt’ve been farther from the truth wrong. Most of the flight was across land. At first we flew over Iceland. Unfortunately it was very cloudy so we couldn’t tell whether the land was actually made out of ice. http://www.efunmania.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/greenland-iceland.jpg. After seeing some more ocean and some more clouds we thought it would stay cloudy the entire flight. So when we opened our window blinds and saw another big, bright white mass we figured we were still in the clouds. We were not. It turned out to be Greenland, which is all white and a bit of blue ice. It’s hard to describe what these snow planes look like. There were also these small, snowy mountains. Well, they looked small, but at a height of ten kilometers everything looked tiny. So anything that was visible had to be very big. After Greenland we saw a lot of the uninhabitable parts of Canada. So I guess we can say we saw the North pole, or at least, a part of it. And it is quite an amazing sight to see.

Getting out of the plane it was still the same time we left: One o’clock in the afternoon. The first thing we noticed were mountains on the horizon. They pretty much look like the mountains you always see in travel guides and picture books. And there they were, just a few kilometers away.

Arriving at YVR Vancouver was an entirely different experience. The airport, which was renovated recently, is beautiful. There’s a big Indian wood carving with a waterfall behind it in the main hall. Everything has wooden carvings. It’s a wonderful sight.

Standing in line for three hours to get our work permits turned out to be less than pleasant. We had to wait in line at the Visa printing office, since Tuesday is normally a slow day. This particular Tuesday was quite busy. So the two customs officials that were working could not handle the workload. And it took them a long time to figure out that they could call in some colleagues to do part of the work as well. So after two hours help arrived and that sped up the process. Luckily we were sleep deprived already, so waiting in line was actually very funny and entertaining. I think we ended up being the only ones who were laughing most of the time, there is a lifelog of it, though making that is going to take some time, we need to sort the images since the date kept resetting. It turned out to be only three minutes of work to print the visa for us. That also meant we could go have a look at Vancouver for the first time.

We took a skytrain – a metro that has its tracks above ground most of the way – to Downtown Vancouver. Downtown Vancouver is the city’s center. And it shows. It’s all high rise. Enormous glass giants all around us. What surprised us was how normal the city felt. It was kind of nice walking along these huge buildings. We thought it would be more of a shock. But I guess being awake for twenty two hours might dull the senses a bit. After a short walk through downtown , Gastown to be precise, we stumbled in to Z2H. We were surprised at how big the office actually is. We had no idea of size whatsoever.

So seeing there were around forty workplaces was quite something else. After a quick look Ryan and Amy – our contacts for the last few months – brought us to the hostel around the corner where we have been staying for the last two weeks. Unfortunately our brains were too tired to actually make conversation, though I think they understood that.

After a short look around the Cambie hostel – and switching rooms since there were bird eggs on one of the beds (sorry, no pics) – we decided to go for a walk through town and get a cup a coffee, because we figured it would be best to stay awake, easiest way to adjust to a different time zone,  and get some bearing of the city. The city center is a wonderful place. The coffee place turned out to be great choice – always trust the advise of an Irish hostel clerk (they know where the good stuff is). We found out we could walk around there for hours on end.

Granville Street at Semore street. Night time view.

Till Isaak’s stomach ran out of things to digest and grew hungry (it tends to do that). Unfortunately it was late and the only thing still open was a subway. Not long after that we wandered back to the Cambie and went to sleep, after being awake for 26/27 hours. Even with the noise from the bar below (we moved a floor down for the night to evade the dove eggs) we slept quite deeply.

More on our jetlagged adventures in Vancouver later.