So I’m currently back in Vancouver for a little visit. It’s kind of odd being back at times. While I’m thrilled to be able to spend time with friends and family, I kind of feel like things have moved on without me in Vancouver. HOW DARE THEY. The fact that Vancouver is hosting the Olympics in 18 months hasn’t helped; many parts of the city are undergoing pretty big changes at the moment (rapid transit in Richmond!).

When I moved away (three years ago today, actually) I secretly hoped that Vancouver would just freeze as it was when I left. This way I could come back, things would unfreeze and everything would be exactly as I remember. The buildings, the restaurants, my friends, everything.

But I’m back and things have not worked out like that. Things change. Some for the better, some for the worse. I still find things to take comfort in, however. On my second day back home, when I was feeling particularly stuck between Vancouver and Sydney, I was in the car listening to the 99.3 The Fox and Econoline Crush’s All That You Are came on the radio. It’s very comforting to know that some things never, ever change.

Things I Did In Bed Last Night/This Morning
Internet
Listened to albums by Sigur Ros and Bjork
Read a few chapters of Yukio Mishima’s Spring Snow
Played Solitaire on my iPod
Listened to two episodes of the Flight of the Conchords BBC radio series
Watched it get light outside

Things I Did Not Do In Bed Last Night/This Morning
Sleep

So I’m heading home for a few weeks on Sunday. As always I’m looking forward to catching up with friends and family. And, as always, I’m not looking forward to the flight across the Pacific. This time around Qantas has decided to really test me by having five major-ish safety incidents in the past couple weeks. Including a few that happened in the middle of the flight.

If you’re keeping score at home…

1. A small explosion ripped a hole in the plane = Emergency landing in Manila.
2. A door problem = Emergency landing in Adelaide.
3. Hydraulic leak = Emergency landing in Sydney.
4. Technical fault = Grounded plane.
5. Funny noises = Aborted take-off.

I will not be flying Qantas on Sunday.

This blog was dead for a while this past week (as was my music blog). Not sure why (the tech guy used many words we didn’t know) but things seem to be alright for the moment. Should it happen again you can find me on Tumblr where I tend to just post random things I see/read on the internets.

…and these were his thoughts (which were cut out of the paper and taped up to a bulletin board at work for me to find).

WALKING in Elizabeth Street on a glorious afternoon last week, I happened upon a Canadian pilgrim at a set of lights. I waved an arm at the sky and said, “Sorry that you had to come here in the middle of winter, but I assure you, this is as bad as it gets.”

It was the only moment all week that I saw a pilgrim frown.

The episode gave me pause to reflect on our notion of winter, and how glad we should be that it gets just cold enough to grumble about (which we all enjoy), but not so cold that we have to shovel our way through five-metre snowdrifts for six months of the year.

How Canadians even exist is beyond me, and why they all haven’t migrated is perhaps testimony to humanity’s capacity to accept outrageous circumstances for no good reason.

For the price of heating a three-bedroom house in Saskatchewan, a family could spend Christmas on a Sydney beach and have cash left for beer and prawns. So why don’t they?

Because they are weird. Canadians take a masochistic pride in living within coo-ee of the Arctic, of having polar bears trash their holiday cabins, of having to wear twice their body mass in insulation just to go out and top the car up with anti-freeze. But the rising price of oil (and polar bears) is forcing our boreal buddies into a lifestyle reassessment. What, they are asking themselves, is the bloody point of living in a First-World economy that spends half the year in a refrigerator?

It was this revelation that hit my pilgrim mate from Toronto on the corner of Elizabeth and Foveaux streets last Wednesday. He was rendered speechless, and was clearly digesting a new outlook on climate and nationality. His paradigm, as they say, was shifting beneath his feet, as he gazed at a winter sky for which an Englishman at Lord’s would sacrifice his first-born to sit beneath in high summer.

I could tell he was juggling exchange rates, property prices, job opportunities. More to the point, he was mulling over whether he really liked all those relatives and foul-weather friends back home. He could apply for asylum, on the grounds no sane individual should be expected to endure another Canadian winter.

I could see all this flash across his perplexed face in an instant. But I knew he would go home, and shovel snow from November till March, just like every year. Why would he do this?

Because Canadians are weird.

Woman attacked by a kangaroo! But saved by a dog!

Australian nature has a cruel sense of humour.

I’ve had to add yet another animal to the Island of Terror scoreboard ———->

So World Youth Day is rolling into town next week and pretty much taking over. Apparently there are going to be over 300 road closures! All this so a bunch of kids can listen to the Pope speak at Pope-apalooza at the Randwick Racecourse. Crazy.

Amanda and I drove out to Coogee for lunch on Wednesday and we drove past the racecourse…it looks NUTS. Tents everywhere, a massive stage so the Pope can thrown down his best moves, and enough fencing to keep out any of the “annoyancers.” Seriously, how ridiculous are these WYD laws?

The best thing we’ve been able to see so far was two nuns poking their heads into the Clare Hotel on Broadway this week. I guess they were lost?

WELL THEY ARE NOW MOVING INLAND.

I have all sorts of questions about that article.

1. Is there actually a Great White shark in Tuggerah Lake?
2. If so, how the hell did a shark get into a lake in New South Wales?
3. What made this man mistrust the media?
4. Seriously, A SHARK IN A LAKE WTF?
5. Is Australia not frightening enough already?

Despite moving here nearly three years ago, Canada Day 2008 was the first Canada Day I actually spent on this giant island (in 2006 and 2007 we were back in Vancouver at this time). Since I had to work I decided to make the best of it and I actually dressed up (a little) for the occasion. In addition to the above shirt I also wore this:

Needless to say, I didn’t wear it all day, but it did get some attention with my students and at our staff meeting in the afternoon. I was even wished a “Happy National Canuck Day” by my colleagues. I was also sledged a bit at work too…but when you come from a prison colony you don’t really have a leg to stand on when it comes to national identities. KIDDING.

(Sort of)

(I’ve already written about Australia Day vs. Canada Day)

Happy Canada Day!

…no punchline.

Just an actual event. SURE COME ON IN CROCODILE.

(Yes, it was small. But still.)

[And for the record, I wrote that title without remembering the first line in CNN’s article. Sometimes the obvious is just too good to pass up.]

Despite living here nearly three years I cannot for the life of me do an Australian accent. AT ALL.

But I have picked up heaps of slang.