I thought starting in a place that spoke English, and was basically a poor mans America, was a good start. The more thing change the more they stay the same, right?
Wrong.
1) I CANNOT BUY BOOZE ANYWHERE :( SADFACE
Want to go to the corner shop to buy some Cava? Forget about it. Cheap crates of booze from the local supermarket. Jog on, chuckles. Takeaway bottle of overpriced, chicken in a basket style Old World white wine from a restaurant? Fucking forget it. You've more chance of filling that grubby Tesco carrier bag with a blow job from the skank waitress and taking that home. You've moar chance of asking for and receiving a unicorn egg.
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| Standard Canadian drinks promotion. |
There are, from what I can gather and unless I'm missing something, only 3 shops you can buy nutritious alcoho-lols from. They all have stoopid acronyms for names, but they are all called U R F C U K E D L O L.
Maybe I'm spoiled back home, and to be fair it's approximately 100% of the reason why our country is such an underachieving clusterfuck of dying brain cells, but I miss being able to get cheap booze wherever I please.
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| Standard. |
2) DO YOU LIKE ROADS?
I don't drive, so roads are always an inconvenience stopping me on my righteous travels from A to B. Traffic lights, zebra crossings, bull dyke Lolly Pop Ladies - these things do not exist here.
The roads seem to work on an honours system. You can cross the road when the White Man says, "Go" (massive bonus points for the passive aggressive racism).
You have a window of a 20 to 5 seconds countdown to cross at certain points. These times are not directly proportional to the width and girth of the crossing, and are in fact just guesstimates from the village idiot who learned timing from the drummer from Fleetwood Mac (because he can't drum good, amirite?).
Occasionally, there is a Bonus Round where you can cross diagonally, like that bit in Drafts when you can zig zag all over the board like the car in Monopoly piloted by the dog in Monopoly (maybe the dog is wearing the top hat from Monoply just to mix it up - fuck it, why not?). It also reminds me of Pac Man when he gets really high on the MD bomb in the middle and then chases the ghosts for a cuddle, only everyones Pac Man, and there are no walls to contain the madness.
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| Canadian street sign. Turn left at Fuck You and You're a Sonofabitch |
I keep stopping at intersections to let cars go past. They look at me with the gentle gratitude that the sexy bitch in The Last of the Mohicans gave Daniel day-Lewis when he decided to save her and not rape her. As they drive past me and give me a cheerful wave, I'm all like, "Well Goddamn, you're a complete bastard. I could've gone then."
3) LIKE A DINOSAURS DICK, MY POUND IS FLACCID
Do you like stuff? I like stuff. Due to our county being, well - lets be real about it, a complete shambles, my golden British Paaand is worth about as much as a VHS of Extreme Rollerbooting. Maybe narrated by Mario Lopez.
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| I Googled 'stock falling graph'. This came up. Figures. |
I use 2L bottles of Pepsi Max as an average barometer of how much my money is worth because I have quite a severe addiction. Like, a deep phycalogical problem. Back home, I can buy a bottle for £1.50ish or usually 2 for 2 Paaand on offer. Over here, a bottle is about $2.50ish or 2 for $4 on offer. It's late and I can't be bothered to check the exact conversion on my fancy Android, but the Mrs tells me that $4 is about £2.75.
This means the pound is weak against the Canadian Dollar. That is all.
4) STUFF THAT IS GOOD
I've only been here, like 2 1/2 weeks but I have discovered the following. I now tell you these amazing discoveries using words.
Mostly *, Canadian women are slender. I think it's to do with all the fucking walking. My second day here I walked 14 miles according to my phones pedometer. I can finally fit into those jeans HAHA LOL shhhh. (In other news, I believe the unfortunately named pedometer should probably measure, oh I don't know, proximity to paedophiles as its name suggests. It should really be called a stepometer).
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| One of these women is doing it right. |
Also, Canadians like the Queens English. I had to adopt this archaic style of language otherwise no bastard could understand me. I finally found out what it feels like to be a Polish Post Grad talking to an Englishman while he fixes the Englishman's sink. I faced a lot of nodding and polite smiles, which I eventually figured out meant they had no idea what I was saying. I got that look, like constantly when I first got here. I think we converse too fast down South. I had to talk like Colin Firth between À la carte portions of dick to be understood.
| Not just a clever metaphor. Single Man. Gay film is gay. |
The flipside of this is that everyone I've met here loves it. I've scored free stuff, fancy treatment in shops, compliments from strangers and I'm pretty sure I could've pulled some dudes at this gay club we went to.
--- ( WT WE HAVE LERNED? ) ---
- OMG so much! I may do a follow up to this, as Canadians have many other cultural malfunctions. Their mobile phone tariffs are fail and they have no 3G.
- Too much walking hurts your knees. I think I knackered a tendon.
- They don't do rolling tobacco either. What fresh hell is this.
* I have not seen every woman in Toronto some of them may be fatty fat fatsos. Please bear this in mind and take the appropriate precautions. Bacon to distract and a harpoon for the kill.