Back in Town & Tips to US Visitors

Yes­ter­day I returned from my visit to my brother and his fam­ily in the Seat­tle area. It was great to spend some time with them, and they have plenty of room (espe­cially when it’s just me and not a whole slew of fam­ily mem­bers descend­ing upon them, as some­times hap­pens). I also picked up a new Mac­book Pro (woo-hoo!), and hope­fully will be post­ing entries from that com­puter from one of the many, friendly cof­fee­houses that seem to be designed for just such an activ­ity some­time soon.

Pam is still out of town, now stay­ing with her brother and his fam­ily in West­ern Mass. I’ve checked the fish and can’t find the one that was sick; I fear that a crow may have come and got­ten him, but I can’t be sure. In the mean­time, I’m cook­ing, doing laun­dry and try­ing to keep the place rea­son­ably clean. With a beau­ti­ful day like today, it is hard to resist the urge to sim­ply go and sit in the park. For­tu­nately, it’s just a bit too chilly to just sit.

As the com­ments on my post: A Beau­ti­ful Day and Career Coun­sel­ing from the Pointy-Haired Boss have sug­gested, my work with the strate­gist at Career Man­age­ment com­pany have had hit a rocky patch. I’m sure this will all work out in the end, but I’m not used to being the ‘prob­lem cus­tomer’ in any busi­ness rela­tion­ship. If they are run as well as they should be, it should still work out in my favor.

Advice to US Vis­i­tors
Its been a long time since I explored the whole US to Canada expe­ri­ence. Part of it is that I’m set­tling down, I sup­pose. In just 2 months, we’ll have been here 2 years(!)

Nev­er­the­less, with an upcom­ing flood of US rel­a­tives due to visit my friend Matt for his wed­ding, he is com­pil­ing some ‘Advice to Amer­i­cans’, with some tips and FAQs for those who may not have been to Canada before. Some are as sim­ple as ‘Do I need a volt­age con­ver­tor?’ or ‘Will my Cell Phone still work?’ (No, you won’t need one, and Yes, but it’ll cost you some hefty roam­ing charges), so I thought a lit­tle bit about things that I’d add, and couldn’t come up with much. Is this because I’m start­ing to for­get the way things used to be and am tak­ing dif­fer­ences for granted? Here are my addi­tions, for the record:

• Watch out for some vocab­u­lary dif­fer­ences, like ‘Parkade’ instead of ‘Park­ing Garage’, and ‘Homo’ instead of ‘Whole Milk’.
• The tem­per­a­ture in Centi­grade can really take some get­ting used to. (is 10 degrees hot? Is it cold?)
• Be care­ful about using credit cards. They often employ a ter­ri­ble exchange rate (which is slowly but surely mov­ing toward 1 US dol­lar = 1 Cana­dian dol­lar these days) and also can charge a ‘ser­vice charge’ for each pur­chase. Bet­ter to con­vert as much money as you can to cash, if you feel com­fort­able doing that.
• Most pedes­tri­ans obey cross­walk signs to a sur­pris­ing degree of strict­ness. It’s just the way it’s done here. (I’ll bet I get some dis­agree­ment on that point…)
• Expect sur­veys. You’ll get sur­veyed on every­thing. Not just hotel rooms, but tourist attrac­tions, and even some stores and restau­rants. Unlike the some­what cyn­i­cal view they are viewed within the US, Cana­di­ans take sur­veys very seri­ously, and are sur­prised that oth­ers don’t. I can’t explain why this is the case, but it was true years ago when we went on our hon­ey­moon in Nova Sco­tia, and it’s still true today.
• Some­times restau­rants and clubs look worse on the out­side than they actu­ally are on the inside. I have no idea why, but this is fre­quently the case. Don’t let it stop you from explor­ing some shops and eater­ies that look a lit­tle dicey. Chances are they just have a lit­tle worn facade, but the tables and kitchen are fine.
• Unlike the US, in Canada, buses are not just for the poor and mar­ginal mem­bers of soci­ety. Here, every­one uses them, so don’t be afraid to.
• Don’t be sur­prised if you see an Adult Book­store in a rel­a­tively nice area. Unlike the US, where they only occupy the worst areas of town that one should never be caught in after dark, they are bet­ter inte­grated into soci­ety here. That’s doesn’t mean that you’ll see them in really nice areas of town, but don’t assume just because you see a Porn pur­veyor in the neigh­bor­hood that the whole block is a slum.
• Iced Tea here is always sweet­ened. For­get about try­ing to get some with­out sugar added. I hope this will change some day.
• In the US, which was sup­posed to be ‘the melt­ing pot’, peo­ple still seem to define oth­ers by where they came from. A coworker is not just a coworker, they are a Chi­nese or Indian coworker, and peo­ple from the US inevitably ask some­one from Asia where they are from, and are sur­prised when some­one who is clearly from Asia doesn’t speak with an accent. That’s not the case here. If you work or inter­act with some­one who is of Chi­nese, East Indian or some other decent, they are fre­quently Cana­dian, born here and with no trace of an accent. Remark­ing on someone’s lack of an accent may brand you as igno­rant, an Amer­i­can, a bigot, or all of the above.

That’s all I could think of for the moment. Most of the other dif­fer­ences I remem­bered that I had to adjust to (aspects of bank­ing, gro­cery shop­ping, doctor’s appoint­ments) were the sort of thing that applies to liv­ing here, rather than visiting.