“Where’s Your Muzzle?” Edmonton

I’ve been in Edmonton for 9 days now, and have had the best of lots of different worlds. The first few days were hectic with partying, shopping, movies and eating out. After the initial burst of Edmonton excitement we spent several days recovering before another surge of energy to get us through the weekend.

It’s now Monday so it’s definitely time for an update and a more detailed account of what I’ve been up to since I’ve been in Canada because my last post didn’t go into much detail on this part of the trip.

I arrived in Edmonton on Saturday 16th of October. It didn’t go as smoothly as I would have liked because immigration thought this particular Aussie was suss. I didn’t bother to ask them what their problem was but I have a feeling it was because I work online, came from America and was visiting someone I hadn’t met before.

They went through my iPhone, laptop and tried to get into my camera. Due to the extraordinarily long battery life of Apple products (sarcasm), my batteries were dead. They even went to the trouble of getting their own battery chargers so they could get into my stuff. One guy spent a long time going through the messages on my phone trying to work out if I was meeting up with Aidan for business.

Eventually they must have worked out that Aidan and me met at eHarmony (jokes) and that we were meeting up for our first “real life” date. After calling him and confirming he knew me and why I was here, I was allowed into the country.

That afternoon I watched my first full Ice Hockey game on TV. The Penguins were playing and they thrashed Ottawa. This afternoon was spent with Aidan’s family who were visiting and sinking my new favourite beers, Mooseheads.

That night we went out on the town and got ridiculously drunk. This Aussie is such a bad influence that Aidan and his friend ended up puking, while I blissfully passed out. It was not so bliss the next day when we were trying to eat bacon and eggs.

My memory is a little hazy on some of the days from here, so I’ll recount the events and not the days. Note to self to update more regularly in the future so this doesn’t happen again.

The next night Aidan and me went to dinner and then watched Jackass 3d. I had a gourmet pizza, which had an oil base rather than tomato paste which is a little different than I’m used to. It was tasty.

Before going into the cinema I produced one of the greatest air hockey comebacks in the history of the prestigious sport to claim an emphatic victory.

This success was short lived after I realised that my popcorn with butter was not what I had expected. It’s a ritual of mine to buy the biggest popcorn and coke possible when I go to the cinemas. Stop judging me!!!

When the guy asked if I wanted butter, there was no way I could refuse this North America tradition. Boy, was this a bad mistake. It was oil poured all over popcorn. It tasted like a litre of cooking oil had been put on, and I’m sure I’m not too far off in saying that.

The movie was hilarious, sickening and downright ***** up at the same time. Was entertaining, brain-dead humour that we needed while we were fighting our respective hangovers.

On the Monday we went to West Edmonton Mall, which is one of the biggest shopping centres in the world (was the biggest at one point). This place is just insane, I’m going to have to go back to take some photos. It has a water park, casino, shooting range, mini golf, cinema, you name it. The enormity of the place is just intense.

I bought a few things while I was there because my wardrobe needs a rapid upgrade. I’m happy with the sweater I bought, long sleeved v-neck shirt and a pair of pants. Not so happy with one pair of pants especially, they make me look like a douche bag Doctor.

The Tuesday was spent recovering from all this activity and sleep that we needed to catch up on. This was probably the time I started watching some Ice Hockey matches and placing a few bets. I probably ended up even after I was a couple of hundred bucks up. I was mostly betting to help my buddy Jim cash his affiliate account out from Bookmaker.com.

Wednesday night the excitement fired up again and we went out for mid-week boozing, the night the locals go out around here. It was pretty quiet though and not much was going on. We went out for dinner and had a few drinks before we decided it was in our best interest to go to the casino.

The poker room rules are much more relaxed than they are in Australia. I was able to eat my meal at the table and there is free pop available (soft drink).

It didn’t take me long to get the table on tilt. Within just a couple of minutes I had one guy with steam bursting out his ears. The game was Dealer’ Choice and this hand happened to be Holdem. I had pocket aces and was way behind with a J J X board and several in the hand. After the turn I was last to act but the dealer didn’t realise I still had cards because I sit with my hands on them. He dealt a King but then the official was called to work out the situation. Eventually I called the turn and the re-dealt river was my ace.

After taking this decent pot I continued on my merry way, all within the first ten minutes. Playing Omaha I hit quads twice against the same guy and took his entire bankroll. I didn’t have time to finish my dinner before it went cold, and spent the majority of my time stacking up my chips.

That was one thing I noticed, they mostly had $1 chips. I’m super slow at stacking because I’m used to the dealer giving me $25 or $100 chips. At one point Aidan got too frustrated with this noob so he started stacking them himself.

By far the greatest story of this night involved Rage (I named Aidan this because he dyed part of his hair red). It started out because the guy that I had tilted and taken the money off, had finally won a big hand after re-buying. It was a sizeable pot in which he had quads and the other guy a full house.

The problem was that the guy only showed two of his four cards in this Omaha hand. The dealer said that in future he has to show all four cards otherwise it’s considered to be a muck. Mr. Douche bag Roids on the other end of the table that was fuming about the hand decided to forcefully say “ship it” and try to claim the pot.

This is when Rage gets invovled. He says “don’t pull that shit, it’s not cool.”

When the guy asks him what he said, Rage replied “don’t pull that shit, it’s not cool.”

Mr. Roids then asks, “Do you want to have a chat about this.”

This is the most comedic part of the night. Rage rolls his eyes and responds “typical response.”

At this point the guys starts shifting his body weight around and it’s increasingly looking like I’m going to have to get my fight on because Aidan had no chance of surviving (mean that in the nicest possible way buddy).

Instead though the guy mutters something about “gray matter” and that he’s a gentleman. I quietly said “rage” to Aidan and we were fighting back hysterics at this point.

At the end of the night, after winning plenty more hands and donking off a good amount I left $300 up and Aidan won $200 in the space of two hours. That turned out quite profitable for us and paid for some of the weekend we just had.

The next night was supposed to be just a chill out night with a few beers, that didn’t quite happen and was one of the funniest nights since I’ve been on this trip.

Aidan’s Dad came over for the night and he invited his friend over who I was calling “gypsy.” The night was full of banter and plenty of sledging about each other’s country was involved.

Big Russ (Aidan’s Dad) decided it would be a great idea to feed me whiskey shots while we hammered down our Moose heads. Gypsy thought it was a great idea to give as much shit to me as possible about Australia, but I’m too witty and came out way in front from these exchanges.

Aidan’s Dad and “Gypsy” from Nick Haslem on Vimeo.

On Friday night a big group of us went to dinner at a place called Earl’s where we ate dinner and got our drink on. After that we went to a bar called 100 that Aidan’s friend work’s at and we got free drinks while we were there. Needless to say, I had far too many vodka red bulls on this night. It ended up with me setting the dance floor alight to Michael Jackson, with one girl saying “you intimidate me.” I hope that was a compliment.

Saturday night I went to my first ever live Ice Hockey match. It was the Edmonton Oilers vs the San Jose Sharks. The Oilers scored within the first minute but ended up losing 6-1. We ran into a couple of Aidan’s friends who we ended up going out with.

Pre-game National Anthem at Ice Hockey from Nick Haslem on Vimeo.

The “heroin beers” at the hockey stadium get their name because they rock you so hard. Wasn’t long before we had our buzz on and another big night was upon us.

After getting off the subway (my first time) we proceeded to walk around in what felt like -50 degree temperature. Somehow we flagged down a cab, which saved me from dying on the spot.

Later in the night I was hoping for some of that fresh air because we got our dance on and it got hot up there. We spent most of the night at the one place and finished the night with Indian food. Butter Chicken is the bomb at 3am.

This weekend was actually quite expensive, probably around the $500 mark. It sparked me into action though because yesterday I followed Aidan’s lead and made an account at budget pulse. I decided to enter in all of my transactions since I sold my Craps website, so I can take control of my finances.

I’ll make a separate post about the financials at the end of the month, but I am enjoying using the website in the initial stages. There are a few other pressing issues I have to get on top of when I get back to Australia, like tax, Paypal and university. But this is definitely a step in the right direction.

Today we were going to go Ice Skating but we’ve been sleeping ridiculous hours, me in particular. We woke up a little earlier today, but still it’s not ideal sleeping most of the day when on holiday.

It wouldn’t have made much difference today though because it started snowing! It’s only the second time I’ve been to the snow in my life so I’m excited like a fat kid in a candy store. It’s only a matter of time before Aidan starts to get bombarded by snow balls.

Tonight we’re going to one of Aidan’s good friend’s birthday pub crawl. It’s a Monday night so it’ll be quiet, but should be a good time because she’s a cool chick. I won’t be drinking much because I want t do plenty this week before Halloween and it’s only 7 days until I fly out to New York City.

As you can see, I’ve embedded my videos using Vimeo. There are a couple of reasons why I decided to use Vimeo. The first one is because Youtube wouldn’t let me sign in or make another account. The other reason is because I can show my videos without commercials. I paid the $60 for the Plus account, so I’ll see how it works out. It allows me to upload 5 gig a week, with each video being a maximum of 1 gig. My camera videos are quite sizeable, with a couple of minutes worth of footage being about 370mb.

I hope you’re enjoying the posts as much as I do writing them. It’s great to be writing on here again and having a story to tell.

Until next time, watch out for drop bears!