The All-Purpose Pretext

Since we moved here, I noticed that even though I had changed the billing address on my Amer­i­can credit cards, my state­ments for some of them were con­sis­tently too late to be able to pay them on time. I phoned cus­tomer ser­vice for one of them, MBNA, and after some dis­cus­sions about pos­si­ble ways of fix­ing this, they admit­ted that they couldn’t help me yet, but the rep­re­sen­ta­tive encour­aged me to check my bal­ance online peri­od­i­cally and at some point in the future, to con­tact cus­tomer ser­vice again to see if they could get what I wanted. What I wanted was to get my state­ment via email (or at least, an email to be sent when the state­ment was read­able), the way I get with my Invest­ment accounts. Since this par­tic­u­lar credit card was even con­nected to my Invest­ment accounts (that’s where the bonuses for using the card go), it seemed pos­si­ble that maybe they might do this in the near future.

That was 6 months ago or so. After get­ting my state­ment for this past month late once more, I decided to give MBNA a call. The ser­vice rep­re­sen­ta­tive had a south­ern accent. That wasn’t all that sur­pris­ing. What I wasn’t pre­pared for was a full dose of unabashed Amer­i­can propaganda:

Me: (after the usual account exchange of secu­rity and account num­ber infor­ma­tion) Hello, I’ve been con­tin­u­ing to get my state­ment too late to be able to pay it. I know that I’m in Canada, but is there any way that you could send the state­ments ear­lier or send an email noti­fy­ing me of them?

Ser­vice Rep: Oh yeah, we’ve had a lot of trou­ble recently get­tin’ state­ments to peo­ple OUT­side the US because of the guv-ment. They now have to check all of these statements.

Me (gasp­ing in aston­ish­ment): You’ve got to be kidding.

Ser­vice Rep: Oh no, not at all. This is nec­es­sary, after what those ter­ror­ists did down here. You watch the news, dontcha?
Me: Are you telling me that I have no choice, that this is the US gov­ern­ment who are hold­ing up your statements?

SR: I told you, to peo­ple in other coun­tries, you’ll be get­tin’ your state­ments late from now on. It’s a new pro­ce­dure. If you want to talk your Sen­a­tor about this, you can do that, but there’s nothin’ we can do.

Me: Can’t you just send the state­ments out a lit­tle ear­lier to make up for this?

SR: Sir, we send those state­ments as soon as we can already. The guv-ment just has to do this to keep us all safe. I’m sure you under­stand that.

Me: I can’t believe this. No one told me about this months ago. Is there some­one else I can talk to about this?

SR: You’re talkin’ to me. Now I sug­gest you check your state­ment online, which you can eas­ily do from www…

Me: (break­ing in) I do that already, I really just want you to send me the state­ments ear­lier or send an email so I’ll know when to check…

SR: We won’t do that. That’s jus’ some­thing we don’t do.

Me: OK, that’s it. I’ve had it. Please can­cel the account.

SR: (almost relieved): I’ll be happy to do that, sir.

It didn’t go much longer beyond that. I think at some point I almost heard her mut­ter some­thing about for’inners.

At any rate, I believe I’ve learned some­thing. The behav­ior of the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion is now being imi­tated every­where, even by the Pri­vate Sec­tor: When you find your­self at odds with your customer/citizenry, blame the idea of Ter­ror­ism. The Bush gov­ern­ment has lit­er­ally got­ten away with mur­der and may­hem by using the umbrella expla­na­tion of “9/11 Changed Every­thing”. The rights of Pris­on­ers of War, the right to a Free Press, the pri­vacy of phone con­ver­sa­tions, med­ical records or finan­cial trans­ac­tions; every­thing is up for grabs under the “We have to fight the Ter­ror­ists.” excuse. I didn’t think I’d be hear­ing that par­tic­u­lar spiel recited to me from a credit card com­pany like MBNA, but I guess this is a game that any­one can play. So, if you get lousy ser­vice or a shoddy prod­uct from some Amer­i­can com­pany, don’t be sur­prised if they pull out the ulti­mate ‘Get out of Jail Free Card’ that has the num­ber 9 and 11 on it.

Berry Picking on Westham Island

We went to the Emma Lea (I assume it’s pro­nounced like ‘Emily’) U-Pick farm in West­ham Island, which is really part of Delta, a very rural sub­urb of Van­cou­ver (these days those kinds of areas are called ex-urbs, which is to des­ig­nate a sub­urb that is so far away that its no longer as tied to the city that it is sup­posed to be the ‘bed­room com­mu­nity’ of.

After pick­ing up Oana’s friend Chris­tine in New West Min­ster, we drove down past sev­eral farms, over a 1-car-at-a-time bridge, and turned right into a farm stand and U-Pick. Although straw­ber­ries are pretty much over,( I did man­age to sim­ply buy a bunch at the end) the berries that were ready this week­end were all exot­i­cally named cousins of the black­berry (and per­haps rasp­berry) fam­ily: Tay­ber­ries, Mer­rion Berries (no, that is not a joke) and Boy­sen­ber­ries. I had never heard of the first two vari­eties. As for the third one, I believe that the only Boy­sen­berry any­thing I’ve ever had was the syrup at IHOP, which was just another sugary-sweet blueish coloured and sticky liquid.

The Tay­berry, accord­ing to Wikipedia is a cross between a Logan­berry and a rasp­berry. It is a long-ish berry, big­ger and more cone shaped than a rasp­berry, and the ripest ones were said to be dark pur­ple. It tasted a bit sour, but milder than a black­berry. As for the Mer­rion Berry, (not only is it sim­i­lar in name to the Coke-snorting mayor of Wash­ing­ton DC, but accord­ing to Google it’s also the name of an Adult Film Star who’s cred­its include “The Oral Adven­tures of Craven Moore­head”). Other than that, as Jon Stew­art says, ‘I got nothing.”

We got back at about 3:30, and had some late lunch (we were starv­ing). Tonight I’ll try mak­ing a dessert with some of the berries, with­out being too fussy as to which is which. I’m think­ing of using my Blue­berry Buck­ler recipe, as this par­tic­u­lar fruit dish reminds me of sum­mers at the Walden School in Vermont/New Hamp­shire, where I’ve always assumed this dish hails from.

A Very Big Beach

We got an invi­ta­tion to join some friends of ours for a pic­nic on the beach last week­end. Actu­ally, the invi­ta­tion said “Jeri­cho Beach/Spanish Banks”.

If you park in Span­ish Banks, Jeri­cho Beach can be a long way off. In fact, we parked (got a ride there with Matt and Oana, who we had invited to join us) and started walk­ing, call­ing peri­od­i­cally by cell phone to try and locate our other friends. “We’re near…let’s see…a red and white Cana­dian Flag Umbrella”, they said. (Matt and I agreed that she might as well have said “We’re near a blade of grass”) About an hour later, we reached the right pic­nic blan­ket, which was indeed at the edge of the Span­ish Banks. I guess I’ve learned that if you take a short bus ride or drive to Jeri­cho Beach (which is just a lit­tle beyond Kit­si­lano Beach), you can walk along beach-front for what appears to be a cou­ple of miles. It never seems to end! I got a lit­tle sun­burned, but not too badly.

For the pic­nic, I brought paté and cheese I had picked up at Granville Island, as well as fruit, some bread and crack­ers. Pam brought olives as well as some stuffed grape leaves. Matt and Oana stopped at Meinhardt’s (a very nice high-end food store not too far from us) and brought other good food. I guess the only thing we were miss­ing was Cham­pagne (actu­ally, in this heat, alco­hol would have dehy­drated us, not to men­tion car­ry­ing the bot­tles and keep­ing them cold!) Later we played Bocci ball, and Pam and I briefly dipped our toes in the Pacific (which was still pretty chilly). The beach was crowded, but as some­one com­mented, every­body in these mul­ti­tudes ‘got along’; No one tried to sell us any­thing or bother us, few peo­ple smoked, and there seemed to be enough room for the thou­sands there on a warm and sunny sum­mer after­noon of a hol­i­day week­end. I think we’ll make another visit to the beach some time before the sea­son is over, but I have to admit, I feel like I’ve seen more sand and surf here then any­where else I’ve lived.

Tomor­row we’re going on another sum­mer out­ing. This time it will be some berry-picking to the south of us (not that far south, because we’ll be stay­ing on the Cana­dian side of the bor­der) in Steveston.

Happy Canada Day!

I think that a national hol­i­day is a good enough excuse for me to get back into the blog­ging habit.

We had a great hol­i­day today, even if we did start a lit­tle late (got up a lit­tle after 9AM after play­ing the board game ‘Ticket to Ride’ with Matt, Oana, and their friend Ryan last night until very late). We did a lit­tle tidy­ing up of the back patio and moved a few small blocks of con­crete that had been sit­ting there for a year, and then we went out to Stan­ley Park. At the Boat House, we caught the free shut­tle, which just started up a cou­ple of days ago. It took us all around the perime­ter of the park (this takes about 30 min­utes or so). It really gives you an idea of how huge Stan­ley Park is. After­ward, we walked over to a park bench by the edge of the Lost Lagoon, and caught a few rays of after­noon sun­shine while watch­ing the sun-dappled water, the ducks, and the foun­tain, while lis­ten­ing to our iPods and gen­er­ally just relaxing.

On the way home on the bus, we heard the best ‘Over­heard in Van­cou­ver’ –style exchange:

He: So have you heard of this Can­abis Day Celebration?

She: What are you talk­ing about? I’ve never heard of it.

He: Just another chance for them to smoke it, I guess.

While this sounded like sus­pi­ciously like a snarky mala­prop, sure enough, there indeed was a huge con­gre­ga­tion of teens and slightly older peo­ple all cel­e­brat­ing some kind of Cana — day by the Art Museum (the stan­dard place for all events that take place in the city), and this one did seem to involve smok­ing, although I must admit that I really didn’t smell any­thing, and that’s say­ing something.

Later we came home, where Pam went down to Granville Island to pick up some fruit and veg­gies, and I went up the street to get some beer. We munched on pizza and beer while watch­ing the Cor­ner Gas marathon on the Com­edy Channel.

Out­side we can hear the music from the park, and soon, the fire­works will start.

In just two weeks, we’ll have been liv­ing here exactly a year, and we feel more set­tled than ever. This three-day week­end hol­i­day has come at just the right time for us to sit back and enjoy our new home more than ever before. I’m start­ing for feel a lot more Cana­dian these days. It’s not a bad feel­ing, eh?