It had all the elements of that quintessential bad flight—crying baby across the aisle to my left, woman with tiny bladder getting up every twenty minutes on the right, and crazy man behind me kicking my seat and deciding my armrest was actually his footrest—but it went surprisingly well. In fact the only thing that really annoyed me is that I still didn’t get to see the end of my second movie. If only I hadn’t watched that episode of Corner Gas I had already seen at the beginning of the flight… oh, the ups and downs of the personal entertainment unit.

Waking up in Montreal today I felt a bit like a mother coming home from just dropping off her youngest at the university dorm. In many ways this is an empty city for me now, all my best friends having flown off to something new. Even my apartment feels distant, full of someone else’s stuff from the summer. The soulful flugelhorn singing across the road in the music building isn’t particularly uplifting in this train of thought.

Despite the great times I had in Vancouver—I have, for example, a small teddy bear from our first place finish at the regatta in June sitting on my television set, and a t-shirt in my closet that makes me smile every time I think of it and the memories it represents—by the time I was on the plane it already felt like it never happened. The same way, I guess, that Nagasaki faded away when I landed in North America four years ago, or the way Montreal didn’t exist while I was in Vancouver.

Yet somehow, though these places ceast to exist when I leave, home is always where I’m not. When I’m in New Brunswick for Christmas, when I say “home” I mean Montreal. When in Vancouver, home was New Brunswick. And now, for a while at least, home means Vancouver.

I went for a walk today and the streets of Montreal felt nothing but grey and urban. Not my best colours, but ones I must live with for another eight months. I can deal with that. Just a blip in time until the next plane, until I’m off to whatever city accepts me, and Montreal might be called home again.

Summer must be nearing its end. The Irish are gone.

My supervisor actually used the phrase “ready to submit” today in regards to the paper we’re writing. It was preceded by “getting close to being almost”, but I still see that as a significant step. My official work term ends on Friday, but I suspect there’ll be at least a few days more next week. The disadvantage of not flying out of town right away, but worth it if it means a published paper.

Meanwhile the less official parts of Vancouver are beckoning. Mountains to be climbed, people to see, that sort of thing. Months worth of pictures are backed up on my hard drive just waiting to see the light of day (by which I mean the internet). Those of you on facebook may have had a sneak peak, since facebook’s shiny and smooth method of making photo albums is much easier to deal with at 2 am. The method to get them onto Booberfish requires a ‘cp’ here and a ‘mogrify’ there, which needs a bit more thinking since I can never remember the right arguments.

Once school starts and grad school applications need to be done, I’ll probably be much more willing to scan through the mogrify man page again during my free time. With only 10 days left in Vancouver, I have more important things to deal with.

The time is 4:53. I have to catch a bus in 11 minutes at a bus stop that’s a 10 minute walk away. Shit—it just hit me. August is not July. It’s a tricky distinction but bus drivers tend to notice that sort of thing, especially when August has not been July for nigh on three days now. It’ll have to wait. The extra two twenty-five won’t bust my budget. That happened a few days ago, at one of the five times I bought lunch at work instead of making a sandwich.

A new rowing program starts today and its best to be on time, I thought. New coaches, new people, and a new boat as it turns out. A double. Twice as wobbly and twice as easy to make a mistake as the quad I’ve been rowing, but half as many people to make those mistakes so I guess it works out. We’re still dry by the end of it at least, despite some rather high waves at one point. It was a nice day on the water. At one point I was reminded, for the second time this week, of “Hazel! We’ve got lesbians!” and I’m now separated by two degrees from a McGill novice rowing coach. Too bad that doesn’t mean I’m any closer to making the team.

I need to buy a whistle.

On the way home I feel rather Japanese, so I put HY and Ketsumeishi on my mp3 player and stop into a little Japanese market. Tonkatsu sauce, $5 a bottle. Thirsty from being on the water in the sun I buy some Calpis Soda, not remembering at the time that Calpis Soda is not the same as Calpis. I should have bought the concentrate.

I continue my walk, up Denman and then Davie, which has even more rainbows than usual. All gay-ed up for a big gay weekend of big gay Pride. I always smirk when I see the city’s big gay newspaper being sold next to the regular weekly called STRAIGHT. It may actually be called “The Georgia Straight”, but the first two words are a tiny fraction of the size of the last, as if the paper feels the need to assert its masculinity in this very gay city.

There are many people on the street. Ahead is a perfectly average looking guy wearing a white t-shirt with a red person on it. I try to figure out who it is but give up quickly. We make eye contact and I look away, but I look back again and suddenly he gives me this big cute smile. Suddenly perfectly average guy is the cutest thing on the street, only because he smiled.

Have I mentioned that it always makes me happy when I see a stranger smiling? It’s like that time I thanked a girl for holding the door open for me and she said “You’re welcome!” I totally had a crush on her for the whole afternoon, even though I didn’t even see who she was.

On the bus back home, the ending credits music from Super Mario World came up in the shuffle, as if Mario and I are travelling back home together, him riding Yoshi and me riding a bus. Yoshi would be cooler, but I don’t mind the bus.

A few days ago the first in a series of fireworks shows was held in Vancouver. I had rowing practice until just prior to the show, so I just walked down from the rowing club in Stanley Park to English Bay beach to check it out. The streets were full of people and the beach was pretty well standing room only. It was a good show, and of course the fact that they set some of the show to a Disney song was a nice plus. (Oh, dorky dorky me.)

All those thousands of people leaving downtown at the same time make for very busy buses. To avoid the rushes, I walked down Beach Ave, and across the Burrard Street Bridge. There was a long line of boats cruising from English Bay, where they had all been to see the fireworks. Green lights on one side, red on the other. Port wine is red. Red means port side. See, I did learn something from rowing after all. “Port” has four letters. “Even” has four letters. Even numbered seats are on port side. Green meads starboard. Odd numbered seats are on starbourd. But I guess that doesn’t apply to regular boats so much as rowing shells.

I thought I could go right down to Broadway and catch a bus to UBC, but when I reached the other side of the bridge I figured I might as well walk along the Kits beach area instead. Before long I was at Broadway and MacDonald, and I figured what the hell—I’ve got to be like halfway by now, I might as well finish the walk.

Here’s the difference between Vancouver and Montreal: In Vancouver, walking along a deserted stretch of road in the middle of the night, I was less afraid of being mugged and more afraid that I would run across a skunk. I’ve seen more “snuks” in the last three months in this city than I have in my entire life before.

The walk from English Bay to UBC turned out to be about 2 hours. Along the way my mp3 player kept me motivated. There was a good long stretch where I motored along to the beat of Turkey Lurkey. Embarrassing, I know, but there’s nothing like an up-tempo big band dance number to put some spring in your step.

And for a while I used it as an oracle. Put the player on shuffle, ask it a question, and the next song is your answer. I asked it if my crew is going to win the regatta on Sunday. The answer: “Yoshimi vs. the Pink Robots” by The Flaming Lips. Well, one of our rival crews is a bunch of strong guys, and at least one of them is gay, but I don’t think that makes them “pink robots”.

Those evil natured robots
They’re programmed to destroy us
She’s got to be strong to fight them
So she’s taking lots of vitamins
Cause she knows that it’d be tragic
If those evil robots win
I know she can beat them
Oh Yoshimi, they don’t believe me
But you won’t let those robots defeat me
Yoshimi, they don’t believe me
But you won’t let those robots eat me

The really stressful part is that, as bow seat, I have to watch our course (while facing backwards) and make calls to adjust it as necessary. “Hard on starboard!” and that sort of thing. Forget disciplining my body and taking all my vitamins—I’ll be happy if I get through Sunday afternoon without crashing us into a dinner cruise.

Well, I was going to write about the rowing regatta I raced in last week…

And I was going to write about how my stupid subletter is going to make my electricity bill go up…

And I was going to talk about abortion or maybe derogatory slang…

But then I went to get groceries and the freakin’ Safeway raised the price on Kippered Herring. Back in New Brunswick these things are 99 cents a can. I thought it was pretty scandalous when the IGA in Verdun (Montreal) was selling them for $1.09, but then I move here to Vancouver where you can bet dollars to doughnuts that any random grocery store item is going to cost $1 more than out east. Sure enough they cost $1.99. At least I had a grace week when I got my first load of groceries two months ago—they were on sale for $1.49 then.

I always make sure to have a couple of these on hand—serve on top of rice and they make my perfect “oh crap I have to go out in half an hour and I still need to get ready and I don’t have time to cook supper” supper. They’re even kosher. My stock ran out last week so I had to get more, and tonight I find they’re seeling for $2.08. Two dollars and eight cents. Sure they have to bring them in from the east coast, but that’s a 210% price increase. And they don’t even have my favourite flavour. What’s an east coaster to do?

The first time I saw you, sitting on the 99 B-line to UBC, you were dressed all in black from your dark hair down to your shoes. It might have made you look gothic or suicidal except for that little thread of white on your headphones, and you were smiling.

What he was doing I don’t remember, but you were smiling at the old asian man on the bench seats at the very back of the bus. Was it that he was laughing? Singing to himself? It made me smile to see him so happy, and to see you thinking the same.

Tonight, as it happened, I found myself sitting where you had been that day on the same bus, and there you were where the old man had been. Your hair and shoes were as dark as before but this time the white line from your headphones matched a white t-shirt beneath your jacket.

As I remembered having seen you before, you chuckled at something in the paper you were reading and suddenly looked up to see if anybody had noticed, still smiling. I’ve done it before too, where you loose yourself in something only to suddenly remember as you find yourself laughing that you’re still in a public place. Or perhaps it was an instinctive move to see if anybody else had enjoyed the joke as much as you. Don’t worry—I thought it was cute. You tore out the article and went back to reading it, but for a second time it had made me smile to see you smiling on that evening bus back home.

Thank you for that.

The buses in Vancouver don’t like me.

I think it’s because they found out that I think they look like crickets and they got insulted. So listen up Vancouver City Buses: I don’t mean it as a bad thing. I think you’re cute.

A lot of the buses around here are trolly type contraptions which run on electrical lines suspended above the street. The connection is made by two long bars which come out of the top of the bus and sweep backwards, much like a cricket’s antenna. Plus, the buses are blue, which makes the similarity to Mulan’s Cri-Kee that much more striking.

I guess the problem lies more with my not having a good feel for the system here yet. My first problem was that, though the same two buses go down the same street, they may not stop at the same places. It’s rather unfortunate when you’re forced to make a bet about whether the 99 or the 17 is going to arrive first, because the half block sprint to the other stop if you’re wrong isn’t that practical (and highly embarrassing). Then, there’s the additional problem that two buses with the same number may not actually go to the same place. It’s Nagasaki all over again — “So, you can take any #40 home, and most #20’s, but whatever you do do not get on the #20 with the boxy looking character next to the one that looks like a person standing next to a tree.”

Nonetheless, just when I think I know what’s going on, at least four times now I’ve been standing at my bus stop (with the correct route number on the sign) and watched the correct bus (with all the right words on the sign as well as the right number) go swooshing past without the tiniest hint of stopping to pick me up.

So lest you continue to snub me, Vancouver trolly buses, I would like to apologise once again for caling you crickets, though I hope you will realise that I meant it as a compliment. Please let all your other bus friends know that they can stop to pick me up again.

That was the most delicious apple I’ve ever eaten.

I think after about three months, I’ve finally started to understand some of the lyrics to Regina Spektor’s On the Radio—”You’re young until you’re not, you love until you don’t, you try until you can’t.” Combined with this week’s series on xkcd, I’m feeling very much like asking the next person I see to go fly a kite with me. Preferably one that looks like a pirate ship, but I won’t be picky about it.

I just came back from the gym. The sun was protesting the indoors, so I swam a few lengths in the outdoor pool before going back into the weightroom. I heard someone mention one of my professors at McGill. I suppose if I had really learned to seize the day I would have jumped into the conversation like, for a moment, I wanted to, but declined.

Later I noticed someone checking me out, and though I did say “hi” later as we walked past each other, I was content then to otherwise keep to myself and enjoy the boost in self-confidence. Is it bad that that boost is directly proportional to how attractive the other person is? I suspect we’re all guilty of following that formula. Regardless, it’s good to feel like the hottest shit in town.

I bought an apple on my walk home from the produce stand. Jona Gold. Forty cents. Sweet and with a texture almost like nashi.

Continuing my walk, I passed a couple of really good looking guys my age. For reasons unexplained, and for a just moment, I felt a little like a chimpanzee. Seeing guys like that in the gym, say, always makes me both a little self conscious and a little more determined in my workout.

But today I decided instead to forget it, continue walking, and enjoy the sun and the most delicious apple I’ve ever eaten.

It took me two weeks, but I’ve recovered from the jet lag from the four hour time change I went through flying here.

Seasoned travellers among my readers are probaby scoffing at taking so long for such a little adjustment. Let me explain.

By the end of my two weeks in New Brunswick, without constraints of school or work, I settled into my natural wake/sleep cycle, which left me waking up around 12h or 13h and sleeping again at 3h or 4h. Generally switching from this vacation freedom to a normal work schedule is a tough ride, but this time a four hour time change in between the two worked in my favour. If you thought about it in terms of west coast time, I was already perfectly scheduled to do a 9 to 5 work day.

So my “jet lag” was not your typical type. For me it meant waking up at a respectable 8h the day after I flew into British Columbia to go to work. I kept it up for two weeks, including one weekend. Let me say that again, because anybody who knows me will not believe it: Last Saturday and Sunday, I woke up at 8 o’clock in the morning. I’m talking out of bed and going about my day, not just awake enough to hit snooze. It was fantastic.

But now my blissful jet lag has worn off and my body is trying to put things right, trying to settle back into its regular happy schedule of waking up at noon. It’s a perfectly fine schedule—it only looks lazy to people who wake up in the single digits and assume I go to sleep again at the same time they do. The only problem is going to work in the morning. I’m worried for Tuesday.

At least there’s always the option of starting my workday at 13h and staying until 21h or so. Three cheers for flexible work environments!

There are quite a few odd things I’ve noticed about Vancouver. St Hubert’s is called Montreal BBQ, and Couche Tard is Mac’s. Slightly odd translations, sure, but forgivable. A little more off-putting are the small black squirrels. I can’t explain it, they just look creepy in comparison to the big fluffy grey ones.

Whenever someone travels to a new place, it’s a common cliche to say that people are so friendly and polite there. I often think it’s just an artefact of being new to a place. In your hometown, you know where the bank is and how the buses work. You don’t have to ask questions much. In contrast, when you’re travelling, you do have to ask for help from people, and it often surprises us just because we aren’t used to receiving it if only because we usually don’t ask for it.

And with that said, I have to say that people are really friendly and polite here. I’ve been getting the impression from all over the place, but I have one specific example: When people get off the bus, even through the back door, they shout out “thank you” to the driver. On top of that, the drivers say thank you when you pay your fare.

Maybe people are just happier when the ride buses that look like crickets. Specifically, the lucky cricket from Disney’s Mulan. Seriously.