The White Stuff

"...It's mountain high, river deep..." ~Bryan Ferry 

One of the first reactions from my family and friends on hearing I was moving to Canada was, "You're going to freeze your bits* off up there!!!!!"  Yes, complete with multiple exclamation marks. Can you imagine how many of these marks were enunciated when they found out what season it was going to be when we got here?

I come from a place where snow is a very well known thing - it's an image that features heavily on our Christmas cards and television. We'll be sweltering in our 30+ Celcius heat, sweating over our roast lamb feast or our barbequed spread, with beautiful images of snowdrifts and ice skating illuminating our Yuletide viewing. Heck, the best displays have all kinds of dancing snowmen and glittering plastic ice crystals to marvel at! And most of the prettiest cards have some version of glittering snowflakes featured on them. To quote a friend of mine, "It's surreal".

I tell you now, if Frosty the Snowman came to life where I grew up, a/ it'd be more than a Christmas miracle and b/ his life expectancy would be all of 5 minutes as he melted down the nearest gutter. As for Santa in his jolly red suit slipping down one's chimney in order to distribute toys for all the good girls and boys; well, he might make it down there, but given he'd probably have collapsed from heat stroke in that outfit, he wouldn't be getting up again. Merry Christmas, kids!

To the majority of people in coastal Australia - and that's a whole heck of a lot of us - snow is almost a myth, something to be gasped at and upheld as the pinnacle of The Coldest It Can Get, Ever! I grew up in the western suburbs of Melbourne, and while I cannot speak for all of us, snow was a rarity that happened Somewhere Else**; probably a sign that Hell was freezing over or something weird like that. Ragnarok, anyone?

Melbourne is close to the ocean, built on a huge bay, and though I'm no meteorologist, I assume the lack of snow had something to do with the salt in the air that kept the ice crystals from forming. As a result, snow was a new experience to me. Even when I travelled to places in Australia that did have snow at certain times of the year - yes, Northerners, these do exist! We're not all beaches and desert, ya know! - the closest I ever got to seeing it were faint flecks in the foggy air and yellow sludge on the sides of the road as we drove through one chilly afternoon near Ballarat. I wanted to stop and have a look, but we had to get to where we were going. I was always a bit disappointed by that.

So here I am now, surrounded by Canadians who have been warning me that by the time winter here was over I was going to be utterly sick of snow. There's a kind of maniacal glee in their tones when they say these things; the kind of "just you wait!" in that deceptively friendly way that reminds me of the understated anticipation an Aussie expresses when getting a foreigner to try Vegemite.

I was hanging out to see my first snowfall. I was so excited about it, I was even mistaking light rain for snow. You'd think I knew rain, given Melbourne's drippy reputation (damned Sydneysiders *shakes fist*). Around me the Canadians were grumping about how cold it was getting already, and here I was, buzzing with excitement. Yay snow!

"Just you wait!" the Canadians warned me. "Is it snowing up there yet?" the Australians tittered in their emails and Skype messages, happily awaiting news of my transformation into an iceblock.

Then it started to snow.

It started slowly; just a little sprinkling on the ground, hard to see against the leaf litter. However it was snowing, and that was awesome!

An hour later, it looked like this:

I was overjoyed. It was something I had never experienced, and seeing the fat flakes floating past my window was lovely.

I woke up early the next morning to see this:

It was a winter wonderland, just like in the pictures. And I was in it! Yay!

Can anyone guess where this is going?

My naive countrymen, snow isn't what you need to worry about. It's the bloody stinking sneaky ice that hides beneath it and makes you fall on your arse that you have to be careful of. Though I have to say that outline of my downfall kind of looks heroic. I can see a super hero with a cloak blowing in the wind in that splatter mark.

I don't go out in it now without my rubber soled boots and stepping very, very carefully. Which is a good thing, coz the snow just kept coming. My fellow Melbournians, when you complain about a heavy frost, you really have nothing to complain about.

Seriously.

At least the Canadians have stopped saying, "Just you wait". Now it's, "Have you had enough?" My answer is, no. I still love it. It looks lovely floating past my firmly closed window.

*Yes, sometimes the word used merely rhymed with "bits".

**To be fair, we did occasionally get snow in the mountainous parts of Melbourne, but it was enough of a rarity to make it into the newscasts when it did happen.

Exotic Vermin

I think the Canadians think I'm crazy. They're more than likely right, actually. Why am I saying it this time?

Squirrels.

Ye gods, I love squirrels. Squirrels, squirrels, love 'em. There's nothing quite like 'em in Australia. Yes, we have possums, but they're night time animals and they don't go sproing bounce bounce yay across the road in the daytime like squirrels. Don't get me wrong, I loved possums in the same way because I came from a part of Melbourne where they didn't strip trees and infest rooves, but to me squirrels are exotic wildlife, and exotic is good.

The husband's family already laugh at me and say "Squirrel!!!!" like that dog from Up when I'm around, because that's the sound I make when I see one; usually bounding my way to the nearest window or closest viewpoint as I do.

Don't go telling me they get into the roof and sound like someone's tromping up there in hobnailed boots. I've already heard that here. It was awesome. I lay there grinning, knowing that there was some squirrel up there bounding around, maybe putting nuts away.

Oh. If it was nighttime it was probably not a squirrel, huh? It was probably a raccoon?

Raccoons.

Ye gods, I love raccoons. There's nothing quite like 'em in Australia. Come on, they even look like thieves with their little bandit masks. I don't care that they get into rubbish bins and make a hell of a mess! They look so cute and cuddly and cheeky. I'd love to cuddle one and pat him and call him George...

Rabies.

Uh. No. Must remember - There Is Rabies Here. No pat the bities.

Damn.  8-(

Miracles in a box!

"She should support his love of Lord of the Rings, he should support her love of diet pills."

This is the line that prompted me to start this blog in the first place. A session of later night telly viewing (that's TV to you non-Aussies) was a nice relaxing thing until an ad for The Marriage Ref came on and I was hit with the above comment.

The WTF metre reached eleven. What the hell was that I just was witness to?

The place I'd begin to explain this probably isn't where many would expect. You see, I am a proud and strong geek girl. I have been for many years now. Pictures exist of me dressed up as a Christmas Klingon somewhere (if my stuff wasn't in transit between Australia and Canada I might consider posting one, but right now that's impossible, so don't ask), and for years I've played MUDs and World of Warcraft. Heck, I even have pretentions of writing the Next Big Fantasy Novel someday, so the notion of loving Lord of the Rings is one I can totally embrace.

Tangent Time!
LotR is one of those epic stories that goes into themes of friendship and perseverance, with the far too human concepts of avarice and betrayal portrayed by all too likable characters. One of the main complaints I hear about fantasy and speculative fiction is that people can't relate to the characters as they're not human. When it's sci-fi the complaint is that they're "little green men with ray-guns". With LotR the main complaint I hear is that "it's little men with hairy feet!" Imagination and empathy, dear chaps. Geez. If I can relate to any given male hero in any mainstream movie while not being possessed of a penis of my own, it's not that much more of a stretch to feel the story of a pair of Hobbits on a quest to save their world from evil.

Uh. Yeah. So as you can see, it wasn't the LotR avowal that made me boggle.

In my last entry I made reference to the different ways Australia and North America deal with the obesity problem. Now, the diet pills comment above was meant as a funny observation on a light hearted marriage relationships show, but for me it was an underscoring of a huge difference between Down Under and Up Above.

In Australia the media makes a huge deal out of the Obesity Problem. Apparently there's No Greater Threat To Australia's Youth Today! Really? Hyperbole much? Every other day there's a new article on the Problem on one of our current affairs shows, or on one of the newscasts, often stating that Australia now has the highest rate of obesity in the Western World (per population). The commercial breaks are full of government sponsored campaigns designed to get people out and active and getting kids away from the video games and back out into the fresh air (often followed by an ad for McDonalds, but I digress). Everywhere you go are sport stores and recreational reserves, and it's a big thing for big businesses to offer sponsorships to community projects designed to get people active and off the couch.

Here?* I've never seen so many pharmaceutical company ads in my life! Apparently my whole life will be brighter if I take Viagra TM (*snicker*), and I'll be eternally late to things if I let the husband take Cialis. If I had C.O.P.D. or any number of life threatening diesases there's a pill for that (Talk to your doctor and see if Brilliantnewpillophen is right for you!), and if I have any kind of pain there's a pill for that too! I'm sure that sometime I'll be sitting here, minding my own business and there'll be an ad for Middle Toe Pain Relievers.

"Stub your middle toe this morning? That sucks! It puts a dampener on your whole day! Just take Midtoehappirin (TM) and you'll be back in your heels and dancing the foxtrot again in no time!"

It feels at times like there's a demand for miracles in a box, and this unnamed woman's love of diet pills emphasised that. I can understand the love of LotR. There are books, movies, commentaries and so many other things to buy, talk and appreciate about anything of that ilk. However to me, diet pills only serve one function, and the concept of being as obsessed by these things as one can be LotR just seems mental to me.

Pharmaceutical companies aren't allowed to advertise in Australia as freely as they are up here**, it's illegal. So this has been a bit of an eye-opener for me.

* I haven't travelled around here as much, and I realise that the outside of the country essentially shuts down for a while thanks to the piles of snow that obliterate everything. Yet from what I've seen of Canada so far, many sporting fields and the kinds of facilities I'm used to are affiliated with children, and there aren't anywhere near as many as I saw back in even the more industrial parts of Melbourne.This isn't to say it doesn't exist, but that it's simply not as obvious here as it was back in Aus. Yet I have also seen that Canadians camp and undertake outdoor activities much more readily than Australians do. It's just that the Aus media are much more insane about The Obesity Problem (worst thing ever!!!!) than I have witnessed here so far.

** I lump Canada and the US into this whole thing, as the TV stations are intermingled.

Take it away!

I've lived with this Canadian guy for years. In fact I still live with him, given I married him and eventually followed him up North. And for years all I'd heard was how superior Canadian fast food was to the Australian; how there were more options, how even in rural towns you could get food at insane hours of the night, how the fast food was generally better. This was what I was told for years until we finally came to Canada for a visit. Abruptly the comments stopped; mostly because I called him on it in front of his family and he realised just how disparaging he'd been. That and I saw the truth of the situation for myself.

In a lot of ways he's right. There are a lot more choices of franchised fast food here, even in a comparitively small town such as I am living in. On almost every corner it seems there's a hamburger franchise or a doughnut franchise, or some other place where one can pour fat and sugar into oneself for a moderate fee. And there are so many choices; I think I can safely say that I could pick takeaway franchised food every night for over a fortnight and still have restaurants I hadn't visited.

Oh, here's a difference. In Australia - well, Melbourne, anyway - we call restaurant food bought to eat at home "takeaway". Up here, it's "takeout". A subtle difference, but one I have to accustom myself to.

In Australia, there aren't the huge numbers of franchises. In fact as I sit here I can only think of a few - McDonalds, Hungry Jacks (known as Burger King to the rest of the world), KFC, Subway and Red Rooster. For doughnut places we have Donut King and Krispy Kreme. For pizza there is Dominos and Pizza Hut.

It's at about this point that an Australian would puff up with pride, telling themselves that they can't be as fat and lazy as our Northern cousins; we don't have the plethora of fast food around, after all. Sorry guys, but while we don't have the institutionalised restaurant chains, we have fish 'n' chip shops aplenty; pizzarias agogo and all kinds of family run takeaway shops ranging from charcoal chicken to curries. There are few shop strips that don't have at least one place you can get hot and fast food.

Up here, an hour north of Toronto, I haven't found these much-lauded open-'til-2am fast food places yet though. We shall see how accurate he was.

So both Canada and Australia have the capacity to eat themselves into happy stupors. I don't know what happened to the family chains up here yet, and wonder if the same thing will happen Down Under. Aussies tended to be resistant to big chains, seeing them as invaders. Pizza Hut is being reduced to small express shops, and the last I heard Krispy Kreme is having to shut many of their outlets, but overall the trend is upward and outward. One of the concerns is (and has been since before I was a kid, I must add) that our culture is being subsumed by the American ideals we see portrayed in the media, and fast food goes hand in hand with that.

I think it's in how each culture is attempting to deal with the *gasp* OMG OBESITY CRISIS!!!!!!111 that the differences are really seen. However that's a topic for another post.

It's just like Sydney!

"Canadians are really similar to Australians." I was told this when the preparations for this move were being made. "They're more British than their neighbours, and a little more down to earth." There were usually a few more comments made at this point about said southern neighbours which aren't relevant to this post. However, then would come the kicker: "Toronto is like Sydney, and Vancouver is like Melbourne. Which city were you going to again?"

To comprehend the horror that accompanies this statement, I should perhaps explain something. There is a rivalry between Melbourne and Sydney that dates back before Australia's Federation. It's a rivalry borne of gold and precedence, of prestige and entitlement, and was the reason why neither of these better known cities were chosen as Australia's capital. The bickering was so bad that a neutral area was created far away from both Sydney and Melbourne so that the newly Federated States of the Commonwealth of Australia didn't split at the seams. That's right, Australia had to build a capital city from scratch to stop the bunfight. It was even designed by a world renouned architect (Walter Burley-Griffin) and the populace voted on what to call it.

Of course, it still rankles at Melbournians that Canberra is closer to Sydney. It was Victorian gold that paid for that sucker, don't you know, so why the blue blazes is it smack in the middle of New South Wales?

It's irrational, but it's ingrained into denizens of the two cities now, defining us from an early age. There are few Melbournians that won't dismiss Sydney as being flashy and shallow, and even fewer Sydneysiders who will resist making some crack about Melbourne's unpredictable weather. See an example of this on the Urban Dictionary using the search term "Melbournian".

It's so inground that even a relatively rational person like me that on hearing Toronto - my destination - was like Sydney, the born-and-bred Melbournian in me immediately went, "Ew!"

But you know something? Now that I'm here I'm seeing that while Canadians and Australians are similar in some ways, in others we're quite different. Perhaps it's the presence of the more extravagant Americans on their borders or the tyranny of distance which shaped both British colonists' descendants so differently, but Canadians and Australians are definitely different. Maybe it's the French influence?

Have you ever had that feeling there's something you just can't put your finger on that makes everything seem kind of skewed? That's how I've felt since getting here. There are familiarities surrounded by things that are just not quite right. Then there are things that are outright weird. Lines on TV such as, "She should support his love of Lord of the Rings, he should support her love of diet pills"* fit into that category. It's amusing and fascinating all at once.

As to whether Toronto and Sydney are the same, I cannot answer. I've only been to Sydney once, and that was at a convention. I never saw outside the hotel, unless you count the McDonalds down the road. What I can say is, I like it so far.

I wonder if Toronto and Vancouver hate each other?

* This gem deserves its own post.